From “Penn Today” At The University of Pennsylvania : “People and Places at Penn: ‘Makerspaces'” Photo Essay
At
The University of Pennsylvania
4.24.23
Kristina García
Hands-on learning fosters creativity, creates opportunities for collaboration, and feels good. Education Commons, the Precision Machining Laboratory, and Tangen Hall all offer space for students to get their hands dirty.
Tools lined up on a pegboard at the Precision Machining Laboratory in Towne Hall.
In the 21st century, universities don’t just teach students about the known world—they help students to navigate the next horizon. What does this look like? In addition to lessons about critical reasoning, communication skills, and analytics, sometimes the best way to teach problem-solving and self-reliance is to ask students to create something with their own two hands.
Whether it’s a highly technical place for trained engineers building metal engines, like the Precision Machining Laboratory, a place to brainstorm ideas and how to take them to the marketplace like the Venture Lab, or an open-access place to tinker like Education Commons, makerspaces offer a place to play with power tools, blast Metallica, and drive robots into one another. Essentially, they’re where students can figure things out, fail, and try again. And sometimes swing a hammer.
Education Commons: Where to start
Tex Kang (left) helps a student troubleshoot their battle bot.
A faint wisp of acrid smoke wafts up from the laser-cutting machine at Education Commons. “Don’t mind the smell,” says Tex Kang, the digital program coordinator of technology and play. “It’s literally wood burning.”
Following a series of commands, the laser machine is burning precise cutouts in thin wafers of wood. In seven days, these wood wafers will be assembled into fully functional battle bots, capable of competing in an obstacle course race, a soccer game, and a death-match battle. (Death, in this instance, refers to the popping of a children’s balloon.) But today, the wood is just wood, one of many build-your-own-robot kits offered free to Penn students, faculty, and staff by Kang and Christine Kemp of Education Commons, a makerspace that is part of Penn Libraries.
Located in a mezzanine above Franklin Field, Education Commons is a rectangular space with domed, steel framed windows giving a sense of light, space, and expansive possibility. Kemp and Kang are here to make those possibilities into reality. They help the Penn community navigate for class projects and team-building exercises—and manage school stress—with a laser-cutting machine, three 3D printers, and creative vision.
Open to anyone with a PennCard Education Commons is part of an initiative to make the high-tech accessible, Kang says. “Like, the printing press was awesome. Now we have digital machines at home.”
Times have changed, and education changes with them. “Libraries being a source of wealth, knowledge, and accessibility … we rent out technology, laptops, programs, so students have education beyond just books or academic needs,” he says.
3D printers are open-source technology, Kang says. “We want to share it with everyone and that’s kind of the philosophy behind makerspaces. We want accessibility, we want freedom to just start building. We don’t want any hindrances—monetary or education—because anyone can join.”
As such, Education Commons can help a student design a physical model of a brain using that student’s CAT scan (an actual project) or provide a kit to make wood-cut earrings or a template to 3D print a Minecraft-themed guitar pick.
Top and bottom Students navigate the obstacle course set up in the Goldstein Electronic Classroom in Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Middle Students assemble battle bots at Education Commons.
If someone came into Education Commons and was nervous or unsure of how to get started, Kang says he asks them what they like. If they are into Star Wars, he can help them make a lightsaber. If they have a dog, in 30 minutes he can help them make an NFC (near-field communication) dog tag with the canine’s medical information, veterinary practice, and favorite food. “I want to ease them into something they’re passionate about, because that’s what drives me, and I imagine that’s what drives them,” Kang says. “They’ll be more motivated to learn.”
In April, Education Commons hosted two makerspace “build your own robot” events and a final battle with about a dozen bots. Kang built an obstacle course that involved robot vehicles racing around cones and across a minefield of golf balls and plastic that looks like clear, sparkling crushed ice.
Except now the vehicles are getting stuck.
“Tex,” Kemp says, “I think your obstacle course might be …”
“Too difficult? I can adjust the difficulty.” Kang comes over and pulls up some of the intervening obstacles. Once again, vehicles zoom around the course. Spectators note which models do well, and which have trouble, cheering and egging one another on.
“Oh,” says one student. “This is fun.”
Precision Machining Laboratory: Where engineers learn how to build
Peter Bruno at the Garage Lab and Tool Library, one of several makerspaces in Towne Hall.
On the ground floor of the Towne building are a cluster of makerspaces, or, as they’re known to engineers, laboratories. This is the home of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), a department within the School of Engineering and Applied Science. All of the laboratories support student coursework and research. There’s one with 3D printers. There’s one with laser cutters and 3D printers. There’s the Garage Lab and Tool Library, where students can borrow a miter saw or an orbital sander.
Then there’s the Precision Machining Laboratory (PML), with four manual mills, five manual lathes, three Prototrak hybrid mills, three Computer Numerical Control (CNC) mills, and various other metal prototyping equipment with increasingly opaque nomenclature. There is Metallica on the stereo. There are metal shavings on the scrubbed concrete floor. There is very exclusive access to machines.
The only way to gain entry without being an employee is to enroll in MEAM 201, a hands-on, project-based course designed to teach second-year undergraduate students to design and manufacture mechanical systems. Students spend the spring semester building their own heat engines, putting their own flash on the system. On engine test day, every machine is running, says Peter Bruno, the educational laboratory coordinator, one of four mechanical engineers who staffs the labs.
Bruno’s job, he says, is “helping students figure out how to make the stuff they want to make.” The idea is to help students learn about the fabrication process from top to tail by making their own products.
There’s a lot of moving parts, he says. There’s getting from a conceptual design to a real, fabricated product. Then there’s the budget. Can shelf parts be used for the fabrication, or does everything have to be custom? “The way you spec something out changes how much money you’re going to charge,” Bruno says.
Plus, digital design is very different from physical design, he says. “The numbers that you put in, the shape that you create, it’s not the final thing,” Bruno says. Like many engineers, he has the mind of a problem-solver. “When you’re actually making a physical product, you need to be able to know: What’s it going to feel like when I get to the end? How is it going to move? What’s it going to sound like? All those bits and pieces. Is it going to look the way I want it to? All that matters.”
All throughout Bruno’s explanation are affirmative interjections from Joe Valdez, one of two instrumentation technicians on staff who started machining more than four decades ago as an apprentice at the Navy Shipyard.
Heat engines built by students in MEAM 2010. Variations on the theme incorporate a pizza chef and Aang, the protagonist in Avatar: the Last Airbender.
Second-year Owen Shaffer machining a part on the lathe.
Joe Valdez (left) works with Vedansh Goenka (right) on the Prototrak Mill.
“Students love Joe. He’s got a lot of experience and a can-do attitude,” Bruno says. The feeling is mutual. Students, Valdez says, are the best part of his job.
“For me, it’s more technical,” Bruno says. “I’m in the education side of things because I love the idea of getting somebody from, you never thought you could even do this to, you’re ready to kick some …”
“And I’m more a therapist,” Valdez says. “Wipe down the tears.”
Tears happen, he says. There’s the workload, there’s general college stress, and sometimes personal issues, Valdez says. He’s been known to do some light relationship counseling.
Then students stress over finding internships, Bruno says. “Sometimes they just need somebody—not their parents—to say, stuff’s hard, but you’re going to be okay.”
“The other piece of this is, and there’s a ton of research on it, making is a mental health benefit,” Bruno says. “Like, actually being in, touching the stuff, doing the things.”
When students get in the zone, they lose track of time. “It’s very Zen,” he says. “You’re turning the dials, you’re getting your numbers …”
“It’s therapeutic,” Valdez says.
In the background, a mechanical engineering student hammers a metal plate into place. “And sometimes you get to hit stuff with a hammer,” Bruno says. “That feels good.”
Venture Lab: Where entrepreneurs learn how to manufacture and market ideas
Sebastián Jaramillo, director of operations, in Tangen Hall’s first-floor fabrication lab.
Soaring over 40th and Sansom streets with blue-green plates of rectangular glass, Tangen Hall isn’t hiding its light under any bushels. Built in 2020, it’s a 68,000-square-foot space with seven stories of communal working space and nine laboratories and studios. It’s the home of Venture Lab, the center for entrepreneurship at the Wharton School.
It could be easy to feel intimidated, but Sebastián Jaramillo, the director of operations, is here to make students feel welcome. Jaramillo, a 2010 graduate, is also a first-generation, low-income (FGLI) student. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, he spent his childhood in both Colombia and Staten Island, New York and is now passionate about making Tangen Hall (open Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.) accessible to all Penn students, who, with a free membership, can secure additional after-hours access, along with 50 free 3D prints per semester and free headshots.
Students can also submit applications for project ideas or apply to programs within one of Venture Lab’s four “pathways:” Explorers, Founders, Investors, or Navigators. You don’t have to wait for that million-dollar idea to develop skills, Jaramillo says.
Jaramillo cut his teeth in the food industry, building community “shared/ghost” kitchens and starting a food business. “You don’t have to be a unicorn to be an entrepreneur,” he says. “Although sometimes, you just need a little time to figure it out.”
Time, along with resources, support, and encouragement are all needed, he says. The test kitchen alone, had it existed when Jaramillo was a student, “would have shaved five years off my timeline,” he says. “If I had been in this building and community, I would have learned a lot before launching my own venture.”
The fabrication labs on Tangen Hall’s first floor are geared towards physical creation, Jaramillo says, with students making everything from furniture to Bluetooth speakers to stress balls that look (and smell) like pan dulce, the Mexican pastry.
Kausi Raman, a second-year master’s student in the Integrated Product Design program at Penn Engineering, shows her “kid-safe power tool”.
Jessica Ramses’s pasta is made from an ancient Mediterranean grain.
Students have access to 50 free 3D prints per semester, using machines that can create anything from a guitar pick to a small-scale model of Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker.”
Kausi Raman, a second-year master’s student in the Integrated Product Design program at Penn Engineering, has used the fabrication lab to develop “a kid-safe power tool,” she says.
The idea grew out of conversations that Raman and her co-founder, Max Liechty, had with educators. They wanted to teach design to children. But the children were frustrated at working with cardboard, their design material. It was bulky and hard to manage with oft-blunted scissors, tearing or folding easily.
Raman and Liechty’s model is a green-and-blue square, printed on a 3D machine. They’ve built about 10 prototypes over the last year. It cuts seamless curves and lines in corrugated cardboard, without any blades or sharp edges.
It’s impossible to stick even a pinky through the hole-punch guard, and the byproduct is tiny, little semicircles of cardboard. “How it works, is kind of like a really fast hole punch,” Raman says.
When she graduates in May, Raman will become Tangen Hall’s first designer-in-residence. She’ll help students with their projects and continue to work on her own, which she hopes will become widely accessible for primary-school students.
The second floor houses the Food Innovation Lab, a test kitchen with wide, garage-style doors flung open to reveal gleaming stainless-steel surfaces. Here, Jessica Ramses, also in the Integrated Product Design program, is working on crackers and a new kind of pasta, made from an ancient Mediterranean grain.
Compared to pasta made from white flour, this mystery ingredient has 40% fewer calories, 60% fewer carbohydrates, 50% more protein, and twice the amount of fiber, Ramses says. It cooks in three minutes. Also? It tastes impossibly delicious, somehow both cheesy and nutty, without containing either cheese or nuts.
“Everybody kept eating it dry,” Ramses says. “We were so confused. The pasta tasted great, but the first thing people did was eat dry pasta. So we thought today, we’re actually going to try to make a nut-free cracker using the same harvesting process and see if that tastes good, because it’s a potential expansion avenue for us.”
She hopes her product will disrupt the industry. “Pasta is something that I’m passionate about because it’s comfort food. It’s a meal, and people consume a lot of it. It’s easy. And if we can make pasta—but make it really healthy—then I think the impact levels will be huge,” Ramses says.
Tangen Hall was designed with the premise of creating a zero-to-100 space for entrepreneurship, Jaramillo says. Staff works with students on developing products or recipes, cost, market strategy, packaging, design, legal issues, licensing—everything from the nuts and bolts to the finishing touches.
Managing Tangen Hall is like tending to a plant, Jaramillo says. “We, as an organization, are really positioned to help these ideas germinate and flourish. And I think that starts with a welcoming atmosphere.”
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Academic life at The University of Pennsylvania is unparalleled, with 100 countries and every U.S. state represented in one of the Ivy League’s most diverse student bodies. Consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the country, Penn enrolls 10,000 undergraduate students and welcomes an additional 10,000 students to our world-renowned graduate and professional schools.
Penn’s award-winning educators and scholars encourage students to pursue inquiry and discovery, follow their passions, and address the world’s most challenging problems through an interdisciplinary approach.
The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The university claims a founding date of 1740 and is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, Penn’s founder and first president, advocated an educational program that trained leaders in commerce, government, and public service, similar to a modern liberal arts curriculum.
Penn has four undergraduate schools as well as twelve graduate and professional schools. Schools enrolling undergraduates include the College of Arts and Sciences; the School of Engineering and Applied Science; the Wharton School; and the School of Nursing. Penn’s “One University Policy” allows students to enroll in classes in any of Penn’s twelve schools. Among its highly ranked graduate and professional schools are a law school whose first professor wrote the first draft of the United States Constitution, the first school of medicine in North America (Perelman School of Medicine, 1765), and the first collegiate business school (Wharton School, 1881).
Penn is also home to the first “student union” building and organization (Houston Hall, 1896), the first Catholic student club in North America (Newman Center, 1893), the first double-decker college football stadium (Franklin Field, 1924 when second deck was constructed), and Morris Arboretum, the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The first general-purpose electronic computer (ENIAC) was developed at Penn and formally dedicated in 1946. In 2019, the university had an endowment of $14.65 billion, the sixth-largest endowment of all universities in the United States, as well as a research budget of $1.02 billion. The university’s athletics program, the Quakers, fields varsity teams in 33 sports as a member of the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.
As of 2018, distinguished alumni and/or Trustees include three U.S. Supreme Court justices; 32 U.S. senators; 46 U.S. governors; 163 members of the U.S. House of Representatives; eight signers of the Declaration of Independence and seven signers of the U.S. Constitution (four of whom signed both representing two-thirds of the six people who signed both); 24 members of the Continental Congress; 14 foreign heads of state and two presidents of the United States, including Donald Trump. As of October 2019, 36 Nobel laureates; 80 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 64 billionaires; 29 Rhodes Scholars; 15 Marshall Scholars and 16 Pulitzer Prize winners have been affiliated with the university.
History
The University of Pennsylvania considers itself the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, though this is contested by Princeton University and Columbia University. The university also considers itself as the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.
In 1740, a group of Philadelphians joined together to erect a great preaching hall for the traveling evangelist George Whitefield, who toured the American colonies delivering open-air sermons. The building was designed and built by Edmund Woolley and was the largest building in the city at the time, drawing thousands of people the first time it was preached in. It was initially planned to serve as a charity school as well, but a lack of funds forced plans for the chapel and school to be suspended. According to Franklin’s autobiography, it was in 1743 when he first had the idea to establish an academy, “thinking the Rev. Richard Peters a fit person to superintend such an institution”. However, Peters declined a casual inquiry from Franklin and nothing further was done for another six years. In the fall of 1749, now more eager to create a school to educate future generations, Benjamin Franklin circulated a pamphlet titled Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, his vision for what he called a “Public Academy of Philadelphia”. Unlike the other colonial colleges that existed in 1749—Harvard University, William & Mary, Yale Unversity, and The College of New Jersey—Franklin’s new school would not focus merely on education for the clergy. He advocated an innovative concept of higher education, one which would teach both the ornamental knowledge of the arts and the practical skills necessary for making a living and doing public service. The proposed program of study could have become the nation’s first modern liberal arts curriculum, although it was never implemented because Anglican priest William Smith (1727-1803), who became the first provost, and other trustees strongly preferred the traditional curriculum.
Franklin assembled a board of trustees from among the leading citizens of Philadelphia, the first such non-sectarian board in America. At the first meeting of the 24 members of the board of trustees on November 13, 1749, the issue of where to locate the school was a prime concern. Although a lot across Sixth Street from the old Pennsylvania State House (later renamed and famously known since 1776 as “Independence Hall”), was offered without cost by James Logan, its owner, the trustees realized that the building erected in 1740, which was still vacant, would be an even better site. The original sponsors of the dormant building still owed considerable construction debts and asked Franklin’s group to assume their debts and, accordingly, their inactive trusts. On February 1, 1750, the new board took over the building and trusts of the old board. On August 13, 1751, the “Academy of Philadelphia”, using the great hall at 4th and Arch Streets, took in its first secondary students. A charity school also was chartered on July 13, 1753 by the intentions of the original “New Building” donors, although it lasted only a few years. On June 16, 1755, the “College of Philadelphia” was chartered, paving the way for the addition of undergraduate instruction. All three schools shared the same board of trustees and were considered to be part of the same institution. The first commencement exercises were held on May 17, 1757.
The institution of higher learning was known as the College of Philadelphia from 1755 to 1779. In 1779, not trusting then-provost the Reverend William Smith’s “Loyalist” tendencies, the revolutionary State Legislature created a University of the State of Pennsylvania. The result was a schism, with Smith continuing to operate an attenuated version of the College of Philadelphia. In 1791, the legislature issued a new charter, merging the two institutions into a new University of Pennsylvania with twelve men from each institution on the new board of trustees.
Penn has three claims to being the first university in the United States, according to university archives director Mark Frazier Lloyd: the 1765 founding of the first medical school in America made Penn the first institution to offer both “undergraduate” and professional education; the 1779 charter made it the first American institution of higher learning to take the name of “University”; and existing colleges were established as seminaries (although, as detailed earlier, Penn adopted a traditional seminary curriculum as well).
After being located in downtown Philadelphia for more than a century, the campus was moved across the Schuylkill River to property purchased from the Blockley Almshouse in West Philadelphia in 1872, where it has since remained in an area now known as University City. Although Penn began operating as an academy or secondary school in 1751 and obtained its collegiate charter in 1755, it initially designated 1750 as its founding date; this is the year that appears on the first iteration of the university seal. Sometime later in its early history, Penn began to consider 1749 as its founding date and this year was referenced for over a century, including at the centennial celebration in 1849. In 1899, the board of trustees voted to adjust the founding date earlier again, this time to 1740, the date of “the creation of the earliest of the many educational trusts the University has taken upon itself”. The board of trustees voted in response to a three-year campaign by Penn’s General Alumni Society to retroactively revise the university’s founding date to appear older than Princeton University, which had been chartered in 1746.
Research, innovations and discoveries
Penn is classified as an “R1” doctoral university: “Highest research activity.” Its economic impact on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 2015 amounted to $14.3 billion. Penn’s research expenditures in the 2018 fiscal year were $1.442 billion, the fourth largest in the U.S. In fiscal year 2019 Penn received $582.3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health.
In line with its well-known interdisciplinary tradition, Penn’s research centers often span two or more disciplines. In the 2010–2011 academic year alone, five interdisciplinary research centers were created or substantially expanded; these include the Center for Health-care Financing; the Center for Global Women’s Health at the Nursing School; the $13 million Morris Arboretum’s Horticulture Center; the $15 million Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton; and the $13 million Translational Research Center at Penn Medicine. With these additions, Penn now counts 165 research centers hosting a research community of over 4,300 faculty and over 1,100 postdoctoral fellows, 5,500 academic support staff and graduate student trainees. To further assist the advancement of interdisciplinary research President Amy Gutmann established the “Penn Integrates Knowledge” title awarded to selected Penn professors “whose research and teaching exemplify the integration of knowledge”. These professors hold endowed professorships and joint appointments between Penn’s schools.
Penn is also among the most prolific producers of doctoral students. With 487 PhDs awarded in 2009, Penn ranks third in the Ivy League, only behind Columbia University and Cornell University (Harvard University did not report data). It also has one of the highest numbers of post-doctoral appointees (933 in number for 2004–2007), ranking third in the Ivy League (behind Harvard and Yale University) and tenth nationally.
In most disciplines Penn professors’ productivity is among the highest in the nation and first in the fields of epidemiology, business, communication studies, comparative literature, languages, information science, criminal justice and criminology, social sciences and sociology. According to the National Research Council nearly three-quarters of Penn’s 41 assessed programs were placed in ranges including the top 10 rankings in their fields, with more than half of these in ranges including the top five rankings in these fields.
Penn’s research tradition has historically been complemented by innovations that shaped higher education. In addition to establishing the first medical school; the first university teaching hospital; the first business school; and the first student union Penn was also the cradle of other significant developments. In 1852, Penn Law was the first law school in the nation to publish a law journal still in existence (then called The American Law Register, now the Penn Law Review, one of the most cited law journals in the world). Under the deanship of William Draper Lewis, the law school was also one of the first schools to emphasize legal teaching by full-time professors instead of practitioners, a system that is still followed today. The Wharton School was home to several pioneering developments in business education. It established the first research center in a business school in 1921 and the first center for entrepreneurship center in 1973 and it regularly introduced novel curricula for which BusinessWeek wrote, “Wharton is on the crest of a wave of reinvention and change in management education”.
Several major scientific discoveries have also taken place at Penn. The university is probably best known as the place where the first general-purpose electronic computer (ENIAC) was born in 1946 at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering.
ENIAC UPenn
It was here also where the world’s first spelling and grammar checkers were created, as well as the popular COBOL programming language. Penn can also boast some of the most important discoveries in the field of medicine. The dialysis machine used as an artificial replacement for lost kidney function was conceived and devised out of a pressure cooker by William Inouye while he was still a student at Penn Med; the Rubella and Hepatitis B vaccines were developed at Penn; the discovery of cancer’s link with genes; cognitive therapy; Retin-A (the cream used to treat acne), Resistin; the Philadelphia gene (linked to chronic myelogenous leukemia) and the technology behind PET Scans were all discovered by Penn Med researchers. More recent gene research has led to the discovery of the genes for fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited mental retardation; spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy, a disorder marked by progressive muscle wasting; and Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the hands, feet and limbs.
Conductive polymer was also developed at Penn by Alan J. Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa, an invention that earned them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. On faculty since 1965, Ralph L. Brinster developed the scientific basis for in vitro fertilization and the transgenic mouse at Penn and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2010. The theory of superconductivity was also partly developed at Penn, by then-faculty member John Robert Schrieffer (along with John Bardeen and Leon Cooper). The university has also contributed major advancements in the fields of economics and management. Among the many discoveries are conjoint analysis, widely used as a predictive tool especially in market research; Simon Kuznets’s method of measuring Gross National Product; the Penn effect (the observation that consumer price levels in richer countries are systematically higher than in poorer ones) and the “Wharton Model” developed by Nobel-laureate Lawrence Klein to measure and forecast economic activity. The idea behind Health Maintenance Organizations also belonged to Penn professor Robert Eilers, who put it into practice during then-President Nixon’s health reform in the 1970s.
International partnerships
Students can study abroad for a semester or a year at partner institutions such as the London School of Economics(UK), University of Barcelona [Universitat de Barcelona](ES), Paris Institute of Political Studies [Institut d’études politiques de Paris](FR), University of Queensland(AU), University College London(UK), King’s College London(UK), Hebrew University of Jerusalem(IL) and University of Warwick(UK).
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