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The University of Massachusetts Amherst joined with 152 other colleges and universities across the country this month to support efforts to promote the kind of innovation and ingenuity for which Associate Professor Charles Schweik (environmental conservation and public policy) has come to be known.
Together, the June 18 national Day of Making and White House Maker Faire were intended to highlight the creative work of small-scale inventors and manufacturers across the country and acknowledge the important contributions they make to our society.
This spring Schweik has been instrumental in launching Amherst’s newest makerspace, a community workshop open to the public that has high-tech tools like a 3-D printer. UMass faculty Steven Brewer, director of the Computer Resource Center, and Paula Rees, the College of Engineering’s director of diversity programs, have also played important roles in establishing this town-gown collaboration, which is based at Amherst Media.
A $15,000 Public Service Endowment Grant from the university has made this makerspace possible. By working with the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District, the makerspace’s first project will be to create and implement a new environmental science afterschool program this fall. The program will focus on developing open-source do-it-yourself electronics hardware that middle school youth can use in science classes and projects.
According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, public access to technologies such as 3-D printers, laser cutters, open-source, low-cost microcontrollers, easy-to-use design software, and desktop machine tools, is democratizing the act of making and enabling citizens to build just about anything.
Earlier this month, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy sent a letter to President Obama thanking him for recognizing the contributions of makers around the country. In addition to highlighting the new Amherst Media effort, Subbaswamy noted other examples of “making” at the university, including the College of Engineering’s M5Makerspace and the Altra Industrial Motion Innovation Shop.
In April, the M5Makerspace hosted HackUMass, a 24-hour hackathon, during which almost 100 undergraduates from across the Northeast created devices such as automated parking meter payment systems and portable health monitoring systems. In the Innovation Shop, engineering and nursing students have built a body-powered mechanical arm for a Northampton boy with limited mobility. The prosthetic allows the bow to perform independent tasks such as adjusting his glasses, wiping his mouth with a napkin and feeding himself.
“The spirit of this movement comes from a combination of technology and community that is truly reflected on our campus,” Subbaswamy wrote to Obama. “We at UMass Amherst are excited about our ongoing contributions to the Maker Movement, which are based on our strong tradition of engaged scholarship.”
