Making is central to MIT’s identity. It is the embodiment of MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” — “mind and hand.” For many students, making is more than designing, engineering, arts, and crafts; it is an act of community. But as campus closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in March, makerspaces were shuttered across campus and many students had to abandon their projects.
With most of these spaces remaining closed to students over the summer, a remote making resource site for students was recently launched to enable safe making from home. Developed by MIT Project Manus and MIT Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS), the site functions as a wiki guiding students and their faculty supervisors’ decisions about how to make remotely while still putting safety first.
“We created this framework for decision-making about what is and what is not okay to do…
