Students in “Intro to World Music” fabricated musical instruments.
3D digital landscapes helped students understand the retreat of glaciers in Greenland.
MakerWeb: building on the classroom experience
T
he College’s MakerWeb is a campuswide resource of interdisciplinary co-working spaces for students and faculty to tinker and build at the intersection of departments and disciplines. • Students in Prof. Jennifer Matsue’s “Introduction to World Music“ used the Make Lab and 3D Print Lab to build musical instruments. • Kristina Tully ’21 used the CNC Lab to carve large-scale portraits from her digital designs for her senior thesis in visual arts. • Prof. Anouk Verheyden-Gillikin of Geology used the 3D Print Lab to create replicas of dinosaur bones to use as visual aids in one of her courses. • Prof. Joy Wang of Mathematics and Prof. Holli Frey of Geology used the Imagine Lab to create digital landscapes for modeling glacial retreat in Greenland for their Minerva Online Course on climate change. • Prof. Silvina Yi Li of Spanish and Hispanic Studies, used virtual reality equipment in the Imagine Lab to create virtual field trips to several Central American locations. “This is a pretty interesting moment because the Maker Web it is the first completely interdisciplinary series of spaces for all of the campus community to come together and share tools, technologies and resources for fabrication and making,” 36
UNION COLLEGE | SUMMER 2021
Welding in the Make Lab
said Cole Belmont, director of the Maker Web. “The exterior door to the building that houses the Make Lab, our newest and largest space, is open to anyone in the campus community, supporting students from all departments including, but not limited to, engineering classes, students in music and humanities courses, as well as students who simply want to use and learn about tools outside of class time or academic work. This was made possible in part by a grant from the J.M. McDonald Foundation that allowed us to rehab the space and add new tools and equipment for students and faculty.”
The MakerWeb consists of five “Makerspaces” for fabrication and tinkering: 3D Print Lab, CNC Router Lab, Laser Cutting Lab, Imagine Lab and Make Lab. The Makerspaces host sophisticated industry standard digital fabrication equipment along with more traditional metal and wood working tools and many other analog and electric hand tools, including light woodworking tools, soldering stations, Arduino kits, sewing machines, basic tool kits and much more. A staff of 30 students from a range of majors serve as teachers and mentors, serving as collaborators in faculty research and working with local K-12 students. It is the student employees (the Maker Corp) who operate the equipment, train others to use the tools and manage the day to day activity of the Labs with oversight from Belmont. “The MakerWeb plays a key role in lifting Union’s ability to build a vibrant community of learners, scholars and teachers that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, bridges classroom and immersive experiences and, as our Strategic Plan emphasizes, engages diverse experiences and perspectives,” said President David R. Harris.. For more on the MakerWeb, visit: https://muse.union.edu/makerweb/
