The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Lakeland College makerspace gets grant
The new HIVE makerspace inside the college recently was awarded a portion of nearly $1.4M in grant money.
The new HIVE makerspace inside Lakeland Community College recently was awarded a portion of nearly $1.4 million in grant money from the Ohio Department of Higher Education, according to an agency news release.
“The state Controlling Board this week approved an Ohio Department of Higher Education request to transfer $1,368,904 in capital funds for the purpose of providing regional awards for workforce development projects in Northeast Ohio, including one at Lakeland Community College,” writes ODHE Communications Director Jeff Robinson in the March 1 release.
According to Robinson, the award is part of the agency’s Regionally Aligned Priorities in Developing Skills (RAPIDS) grants, which are used across Ohio to “purchase state-of-the-art equipment for use in learning laboratories specific to regional workforce needs.”
“And because the laboratories are often shared among colleges and universities, the resources operate efficiently and help more students get a quality education more affordably,” Robinson’s release reads, adding that the money Lakeland will receive is earmarked for purchasing “additional equipment for the school’s Fab Lab,” or makerspace. It was immediately unclear March 8 what specific equipment the school will purchase with the additional dollars.
Lakeland Community College President Morris W. Beverage, in an August 2017 News-Herald article
“We’re hoping the technology will be tools they will use to reach effective solutions, not be the beginning and end of the process.”
—Lakeland President Morris W. Beverage
about what new offerings students and the community had to look forward to from Lakeland in the near future, said the school conducted in-depth research before beginning to design the HIVE, which is a prominent fixture on the ground floor of Lakeland’s new Health Technologies Building.
“It’s all about helping students tap into their own creativity, develop confidence in themselves and their problem-solving abilities, and demonstrate how to go about problem-solving,” Beverage said, adding that the new space isn’t as much about the technology that will occupy it. Rather, he said, it’s more about the people who will use it.
“We started with a space that is designed around the students, not necessarily designed around the technology,” Beverage said. “We’re hoping the technology will be tools they will use to reach effective solutions, not be the beginning and end of the process.”
Beverage’s assistant, Leah Konopka Hartmann, also has been instrumental in the layout, design and development of the HIVE. She said it will be stocked with the accoutrements commonly used in makerspaces, including technology like 3-D printers, laser cutters, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets.
”But we’re also incorporating low-fi technology — maybe a weaving loom, a screen-printing setup and a sewing machine,” she said.
The research leading up to the space’s design elements involved not only following and studying the needs of a number of students. It also included an open-house scenario during which numerous students used some of the equipment already installed there, including a button maker.
“We wanted to see what the reactions of students would be. So we ran a trial for two days and saw a lot of interesting things come from it,” Beverage said. “For example, we had a student who is the mother of 11 children. She was there on the first day and tried (the button maker). Then, she showed up the second day with pictures of each of her children and made buttons out of each of them.”
Konopka Hartmann said another enterprising student who was, at the time, taking a marketing class decided to use the machine in conjunction with a project she was assigned for that class.
The other research the school did before making moves to manifest its makerspace was thorough, as well. Beverage explained that, for about six months, organizers followed a number of students, including at their homes in the mornings as they prepared for their days, fed their children breakfast, got them off to school and headed to school, themselves.
“I think that, what happened through this was that it reiterated something we already knew about each of our students — that they’re pretty unique, that the problems they face are unique and that they’re all very creative, innovative and have an appetite for this kind of learning,” Konopka Hartmann said. “Given the opportunity to collaborate, they’ll really take advantage of that.”
Both Beverage and Konopka Hartmann stressed the fact that the HIVE makerspace (which Beverage said is not an acronym but, rather, illustrates the busy, collaborative nature of a bee hive) and is available not only for students, but also for the community at large.