Home schooler's hard hat tour shows unusual field trip option

Local students are visiting the site of the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital and Pearl Tourville Women’s Pavilion and learning what it takes to build the largest pediatric hospital in the state.

Construction on the 11-story, $385 million children’s hospital and women’s pavilion began in downtown Charleston in August 2016 and it is expected to open in late 2019. The new facility will replace the 28-year-old MUSC Children’s Hospital, providing space for additional patients, expanded services and more spacious, family-centered amenities.

For one local student, who is home-schooled by his grandparents, the tour turned into a personal mentorship experience. A special tour was created by Robins & Morton, construction lead on the project, which allowed him to shadow some of the engineers and meet construction workers.

Vincent Hild-Mullins, 14, who lives in Charleston, went there with his grandmother, who coordinates his field trips and supplemental work. “I am planning to be an electrical engineer, and I learned that I want to become a heavy conduit engineer,” said Vincent, who is in the ninth grade. He described this type of engineer as one who works with the switchboard, generators, the cooling tower and other areas that involve electricity. He said he doesn’t want to be inside an office all day.

Vincent became interested in engineering at a job fair he attended in the fifth grade. He’s always enjoyed building things like Legos and Minecraft, and his interests grew from there.