Butte College will receive a $250,000 grant per year for two years to build a makerspace, a place on campus students can use to build projects, collaborate with peers and create connections that could lead to internships.
The grant comes from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office whose aim is to bring the community and colleges together and prepare students for STEM and STEAM jobs.
It’s important for students to have access to faculty and equipment to practice their craft, said Carol Pepper-Kittrage, the statewide project manager and director of Sierra College Center for Applied Competitive Technologies. “No other community colleges in the country have an initiative like this.”
During the first year of funding, Butte College will focus on building a createspace in the arts department at the main campus, according to Daniel Donnelly, one of two full-time faculty members leading the project and chair of the digital arts and design department at the college.
They will work to develop curriculum across campus to prepare students to use the space and begin reaching out to the community to develop internships.
The college plans to focus on offering the space to the community while finding ways to team up with local spaces, such as Idea Fab Lab in Chico, during the second year of funding.
“We don’t want to compete with them directly,” Donnelly said. “We might have equipment that they may not have and they can come and use it.”
They will also find ways to team up with Chico State and other local schools to offer them access.
Curriculum will include projects where areas such as the English department could use the createspace for a creative writing class and use a laser cutter to create a cover for a book to bind their essays, Donnelly said.
“We want to make it possible for students in many different areas of the college to have access to the space to create projects,” Donnelly said.
Butte College was one of 24 California community colleges to receive funding to create a makerspace.
American River College in Sacramento has a functioning space and is using some of its funding to provide internships.
“We lose some of our interns to industry before they even graduate,” said Randy Schuster, one of the faculty team members. The students are in a work experience class and essentially work for the space.
They use their space for projects around the college and out in the community. The students have been building a drone for the Sacramento Cemetery District because it wants high quality scans of historical cemeteries.
“We built our own drones,” Schuster said, “because that’s a lot more fun than just buying them.”
Moorpark College started with a pop-up makerspace on Sept. 18 and will be using its funding to build a full-sized makerspace.
“We want to work with our students and make connections for our students in the community,” said Michael Hoffman, a member of the faculty leading the makerspace project and journalism professor at Moorpark College.
During the first year, students will work in a series of makerspaces, and projects will be specified to that space. During the second year, the Moorpark group plans to open it to the public to get the entire community involved.
Idea Fab Lab in Chico is a small makerspace that is open to the community and offers people access to equipment that they might not have access to otherwise. The space also offers field trips and demonstrations to schools in the community and participates in projects for local organizations.
“It’s kind of like a tech based community center,” said Erin Banwell, one of the five founders of Idea Fab Lab and lab lead. “We are teaching techs to be artists and artists to be techs.”
The California Community College makerspace project is funded through May 2019, according to Pepper-Kittrage. The California Community College Chancellor’s office doesn’t know if it’s going to continue.
“We are operating with the time we have,” Pepper-Kittrage said. “The goal is helping colleges with a plan of action specifically for their college.”
-- By Ruby Larson
