The basement of Michigan Tech’s Memorial Union used to be a place for knocking down bowling pins. By next semester, if renovations go well, it will be a place for building up dreams.
About 100 Tech students, faculty and staff recently gathered at the union to brainstorm that transformation and help design Michigan Tech’s first “makerspace” — a lab, workshop and hangout where anyone in the university community will be able to go to turn their ideas into prototype realities, according to The Daily Mining Gazette.
The ideas came fast and furious, were turned into floor plans and debated by groups that merged them into proposals, sometimes even modeling them out of Play-Doh and pipe cleaners.
Mechanical Engineering staffer Nancy Barr’s team suggested workbenches and some serious tools like a band saw and drill press, along with art supplies and one of the more common suggestions,…