STUDENT DESIGN New center scheduled to open in late October THE FLORIDA TECH CRIMSON
OCT. 7 2015
ISSUE 7
Photo by Ebube Ubochi
The signage will officially be Harris Student Design Center, due to Harris Corporation’s $1 million donation last this January. Rebekah Duntz Editor-in-Chief The Student Design Center has slowly appeared before our eyes over the course of three months, and is now scheduled to open in late October or early November. “I have class next door to it at the machine shop,” Curtis Marsh, a senior in aerospace engineering said. “I like it so far. It looks like a hangar.” Marsh is on the Formula SAE team, which will be going to Michigan International Speedway this May to compete in the design series. He and his teammates, like many other seniors participating in capstone projects, will be spending a lot of time during the spring semester in the new facility.
“I’m aerospace, but I’m working on the mechanical project,” Marsh said. “The other aerospace, like Mars Rover, Mining Bot, all those teams are going to be needing space too.” In the past, Marsh said the machine shop didn’t have a lot of room for all the students to build the parts they needed and there was a lot of competition for time. “Having the machine shop and the design center at the same time will be very good,” Marsh said. “It takes time to build parts. That’s mostly why people were complaining in the past.”
The specs: Florida Tech started designing the building one year ago,
and university architects obtained the permit to start construction in March. The metal building arrived in late June. “It’s gone together fairly rapidly at a cost of just under $1.9 million,” said Greg Tsark, the university architect. That number includes everything in the project development from construction and planting to furniture and the $1 million donation received from Harris Corporation this January. But the cost to the university for the building was only $900,000 of this total. “For under a million dollars, it’s a really remarkable asset,” Tsark said. The facility totals 11,600 square feet, with the main high bay, four smaller project rooms to the side, a lobby, bathrooms, and an ideation room.
“And 8,000 of that is basically a big high bay, which is basically a big high-tech barn,” Tsark said, laughing. “And so in that high bay, we have a lot of room to construct and fabricate whatever you guys dream up.” In the high bay area are storage racks, a spray booth, an overhead crane, function generators, welding stations, and compressed air and power throughout, which are available in floor boxes. There will also be storage space for the projects for when they’re not being worked on. As for the smaller project rooms, Tsark said they’re there are four rooms that are meant for more sensitive projects that don’t necessarily want to be in the messy, dirty high bay space. “Each project room is designed to hold three teams, so those
four project rooms could potentially hold 12 capstone projects.,” Tsark said. The ideation room will be a kind of brainstorming hangout, complete with a mondopad, floorto-ceiling whiteboards all the way around the room, and flexible furniture that can be rearranged however students want it.
“A nod to our past”: The branching metal tree on the corner of the building is an architectural nod to our past, present and future.
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Students forge friendships, start cycling group through app Started on Yik Yak, now we’re here: the story of #BikeGroup Alex Coultrup Managing Editor For a small group of Florida Tech students this fall, sharing the great outdoors with their peers started atypically: on Yik Yak. It all began when Noah Keaton, freshman and physics major, shared a photo from his sunrise beach bike ride on the anonymous, location-based mobile app. “Because I was bored here, I decided to go one time, and I posted pictures of it, and people were like ‘Oh I would have gone with you; you should have told me,’” Keaton said. Though he didn’t think other students would show up, Keaton waited outside Clemente Center with his bike the next morning. “No one showed up the first time,” he said. “Because you know, on Yik Yak, people don’t
trust other people, or they just don’t follow through.” But after posting photos of the sunrise from this ride, more users commented, expressing that they’d like to ride with him. Freshman Andy Griscom said he missed the first group, but still wanted to join in and bike to the beach next time. “I hadn’t seen the original post,” Griscom said, “but I was like oh, crap, can we do this again?” Keaton arranged a second ride and the students met outside Clemente Center at 6:30 a.m. #BikeGroup was born. “It was us, Xavier and Mario the first time, and we’ve been doing this every Saturday,” Griscom said. “We’ve had people come and go, but it’s usually the same four or five people.” Griscom said that he’s not a morning person by choice, but
having several 8:00 a.m. classes has forced him to adapt. “It’s nice to get up in the mornings and do something, you’re fired for like the first 10 mins, then the physical activity wakes you up and you feel great. Since PDH doesn’t open until 8:30, we sometimes just sleep on the beach for a little bit.” The group members have varied, and their biggest group has had eight riders. “We say hi to each other all the time. I guess you could say I’ve made friends,” Keaton said. “We haven’t hung out too much aside from biking.” Keaton, a Miami local, said he wasn’t always the kind of person who would arrange such a way to interact with strangers. “I’ve changed recently to become more social after I spent a year in Spain for an exchange program,” he said. “And there I just
had to become more open. So you have to kind of approach people.” Griscom is the only person who’s been going on rides every single week, Keaton said. He explained that it’s been a unique experience to meet people he otherwise might not have befriended. But both Keaton and Griscom agree: meeting people via Yik Yak is a risk. “The thing is, you don’t know who or what they are, so you’re taking a big risk. If you decide to meet someone at the dining hall for a meal, it’s different,” Keaton said. “Nothing bad is going to happen at the dining hall.” Despite the risk, Griscom said he wasn’t worried since the group meets in the center of campus. He describes himself as an intermittent Yik Yak user, opening the app occasionally to see what’s
going on around campus. “It’s interesting to see what people are actually thinking, so people say things that they wouldn’t otherwise say, which can be disappointing sometimes to see, but for the most part, it’s not too bad.” Even with apps like Yik Yak, common courtesy should be observed, Keaton said. “One thing is, don’t say you’re going to do something if you’re really not gonna do it. That’s for Yik Yakkers. Dedicate to what you say, stick to what you say.” For all involved, the Bike Group has evolved into an interesting break from otherwise potentially monotonous weekends. “I started biking just to do something,” Keaton said. “Because it can get pretty boring if you’re not doing something.” v