Makerspace is keeping Chandler-Ulmann Hall’s wood shop and Wilbur Powerhouse design lab open late, and it’s not just engineering students that are flooding their doors.
Makerspace is a club on campus composed of undergraduate volunteers and graduate students paired with Lehigh staff. Its goal is to make a physically safe place on campus for students of all majors to just tinker.
“So often, only the engineering students are the ones venturing into the facilities that Lehigh offers,” said Brian Slocum, the director of all design labs on campus. “And maybe it’s because the tools are scary or the requirements for becoming certified to use the tools are too daunting, or maybe it’s just that no one else thinks they have a reason to be in a wood shop. But making things is fun.”
A new club at Lehigh, Makerspace was founded last semester. Slocum reached out to a group of engineering students he said he frequently saw in Wilbur. Among the people he reached out to was Peter Nguyen, ’18, a founding member of both Makerspace and CREATE, another new club on campus that works with student entrepreneurs.
Together, the group began to look for ways to generate interest and make students aware of the powerhouse facilities on campus. The result was several open house-style events that all students were welcome to attend.
Emma Isaacs, ’19, was one of the first engineering students to volunteer at the Makerspace events.
“While all the volunteers so far are engineers, the goal of the club is to make workshops open for all other students to finish projects or just to work,” Isaacs said. “All the volunteers are workshop-certified, and all of us know how to teach the safety protocols on the equipment.”
Before winter break, Makerspace hosted its first event in Wilbur. By using tools that were available in the building, students could make cookie cutters and ornaments out of sheet metal and other various materials. Slocum said the sheet metal was cut with shears that were operated by foot before it was shaped with a laser cutter to form ornaments.
“The process was very simple,” he said. “It was just such a fun event to get everyone in the holiday mood, as well as become accustomed to using tools.”
Student volunteers were available with the bigger tools to properly instruct fellow students how to work the instruments. Though Slocum said only 50 people were predicted for the first event, at least 100 turned out to make holiday ornaments.
Makerspace hosted its second event last week, where students melded metal roses in honor of Valentine’s Day. The metal roses, though more complicated to make than cookie cutters and holiday ornaments, drew an attendance of 150 students. All that was required was sheet metal cut with shears and shaped with a metal rod.
“I think students are daunted by making things sometimes because they picture the metal being used going from something to nothing, when in fact the steps involved are really very simple,” Slocum said.
Isaacs said a goal of the club is to educate enough students in tool safety so they can effectively oversee their peers and the organization can host more events. Under the facilities’ protocol, a Makerspace member must always be on hand to support a non-member. The student volunteers are experienced and have logged many hours using the tools so they are comfortable sharing their knowledge with their peers.
Nguyen said his favorite part of the new club and the expansion of Wilbur is watching students try something completely new to them and gradually get less afraid as the night wears on.
Over the course of the next two semesters, Makerspace hopes to expand the number of events it hosts in order to see a bigger student turnout.
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