FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. –Architecture students Virginia Boyd and Chase Pitner will show more than 300 eighth-grade math students how numbers and formulas shape real spaces in a series of presentations that will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, in the large group classroom at Ramay Junior High. The students, who are enrolled in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, will share models and sketches of their own projects, which range from a curvilinear beach house to plans for Fayetteville’s Walker Park.

Virginia Boyd visited Florence during her semester of study in Rome. Photo courtesy Virginia Boyd.

The architecture presentation builds on a hands-on exercise in which the math students designed a simple, 2,000-square-foot house, then calculated the house’s area, wall surface area, perimeter and volume in order to determine quantities of flooring, paint and other materials needed.

“This is going to be eye-opening for our kids ­– they will see that architecture is not out of their reach,” said Maridith Gebhart, a math teacher at Ramay who developed the house exercise.

Boyd learned about the math project through a friend at her church and is eager to share her own experience with the eighth graders.

“I want to show them that this is where you can start,” she said. “The teachers are concerned about students closing doors to math. I can tell them that the stuff they’re learning now and in Algebra I next year is the basis for all of the calculations we do in architecture school.”

Boyd has taught architecture concepts to teens at a summer workshop and recently worked with local scouts pursuing the architecture badge. She will graduate this Saturday, and is interviewing for teaching jobs. Pitner, a third-year architecture student, hopes to continue work with Ramay students and teachers in the future.