Academic maker spaces and engineering design

Abstract

The arrival of academic makerspaces on college campuses signals an important development for engineering design education. On a growing number of campuses, traditional machine shop equipment has been combined with digital design and manufacturing tools to establish creative communities. These communities support academic, extracurricular and personal design activities under the watch of university faculty, staff, and students. As awareness of the value of academic makerspaces increases in academic and non-academic settings, a larger number of universities are developing these new facilities for learning and creating, often with unique institutional purposes. This paper reviews facilities at Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rice University, Stanford University, and Yale University and highlights the unique attributes of each institution's academic makerspace.