Folsom Lake College’s Student-Centered Approach Yields Exceptional Results
“We’re most proud of how students who interact with the space rise to levels beyond what we might have imagined in terms of leadership and devising creative solutions that nobody’s ever thought of. We’re proud of seeing people rise to their potential.” — Zack Dowell, FLC Innovation Center Director
Established less than 20 years ago in 2004, Folsom Lake College (FLC) is a relatively young institution. Just three years after being accredited, the school purchased its first digital fabrication tool: a high-end 3D printer that only a handful of people knew how to operate. One of them was Instructional Design and Development Coordinator Zack Dowell, who has witnessed (and been at the forefront of) the college makerspace’s evolution to what is now the vibrant and decidedly student-centered Folsom Lake College Innovation Center.
Even though FLC already had an established makerspace before the CCC Maker grant, the makerspace startup process helped them to use the network as a resource and sounding board to further hone their focus toward students. Being able to connect with the CCC Maker network of colleges also informed their direction through sharing of information, systems, perspectives, methods, and camaraderie.
Dowell’s original role in 2007 was to help faculty navigate the waters of 21st century innovation tools, but now he works alongside his nearly all-student staff at the makerspace. In addition, he continues to guide faculty in ways to incorporate hands-on learning in their curriculum. He shares, “The inspiration is empowering students to look at problems in a different way, to have a different set of possibilities, and to give them access to tools. Empowerment manifests itself in a lot of different ways.”
Reflecting Student Interests
The Innovation Center has become a multi-faceted reflection of student needs and desires, as well as a central campus location for workshops, events, internships, and collaborations, all prime for students to build both hands-on and soft skills, to explore career options, and to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. This 1720-squarefoot space includes both a Dirty and Clean lab (think debris-forming tools like woodworking saws versus tools that require clean environments, like computers and digital fabrication machines), as well as a full music studio and array of virtual reality and gaming equipment. The programming includes machine-specific trainings, open lab hours, tours, and workshops.
The music studio and VR equipment are prime examples of responding to student interest to welcome and encourage a broader student population in the space and to ensure access and equity. The recording studio, in particular, broadens the forms of making happening in the space and is a big draw to students who may not have otherwise felt inspired to check it out. The Innovation Center even has its own page on SoundCloud, the open audio distribution site, featuring music that students created in the studio, essentially serving as an online open portfolio.
The workshops that the Innovation Center offers also represent a wide range of student interests. On any given month, the lineup may include everything from traditional makerspace workshops, such as learning to use a CNC mill or 3D printer, to a workshop on crafting paper wreaths and an Alice in Wonderland Tea Party complete with hands-on tea making, laser-cut shadow puppets, and character figure drawing. With offerings as diverse as the student population, every student is welcomed. As Dowell notes, “People love this space and they’re proud of it. It’s amazing to think of a place on campus in an institution that people have that level of emotional connection to.”
Agency Through Respect and Responsibility
With programming and tools informed by student interest, as well as a predominantly student staff, an inherent respect for the space organically develops. By creating an environment where all are welcomed and by cultivating a strong sense of student agency, FLC found that students naturally step up.
Dowell reflects, “Our single greatest resource has been the students and the degree to which we’ve let them rise as leaders and participate on very deep levels. Empowering students is like a giant wellspring of energy, creativity, and uniqueness.” At the time of this writing, students alone had entirely planned and executed the semester grand opening of the makerspace, intended to celebrate the space and welcome new students, with little oversight from Dowell and other faculty, to great effect.
When students feel an emotional connection to a space and a sense of ownership, they become invested in its betterment. Dowell notes, “There have been times where we had to reset expectations, and we do that as necessary, but we have students who’ve stepped up into leadership roles, and the students themselves end up holding each other accountable,” thereby creating a strong culture that is internally moderated. Not only does this instill a sense of responsibility and work ethic that will prove to be useful in future work environments, it frees up faculty staff members to focus on bigger issues. Student leaders in the space are even deputized to find their replacements when it’s time for them to graduate. The key is establishing conditions in which people can thrive and flourish.
Autonomy, Community, Sustainability
The Innovation Center staff participates in a retreat at the beginning of every semester, and a recent one brought to the fore three overarching themes: autonomy, community, and sustainability. The focus of the team discussion was how to elevate students who walk into the space into full users of the space while ensuring the safety of users and the preservation of tools.
Tool trainings were being conducted via appointments and workshops, which were becoming a bottleneck with the number of students who wanted to use the space. The team’s solution, in the spirit of autonomy, was to have staff members choose tools to then create training materials for. Using the students’ body of knowledge, they created trainings through the Canvas online learning management system. Now folks can auto-enroll in trainings, move through the steps, and become certified to use a particular tool.
The community theme manifested in focusing on ways to deputize super-users of the space, who are not paid staff, to take on some of the responsibilities of the space. Dowell notes, “There are people who just want to be there. They feel at home in the space and appreciate having access to these amazing tools and people, and so they want to help.” Recognizing these students and making them shop stewards is essential to building strong community. There are students who have excelled at certain tools, like the laser cutter, and they can help offset some of the work that needs to be done. Dowell adds, “It’s not that we don’t want to pay them, but we can’t pay everyone in the space. That would be unsustainable.” Thus, building autonomy and a strong, passionate community lends to the sustainability of the space.
New Definitions of Well-Educated
The demands of today’s job market require a different kind of training. Being well-educated no longer means being well-versed in any one particular topic or discipline, but rather having the ability to nimbly evaluate a problem, see connections, devise solutions, test them, and iterate. The makerspace environment, like the 21st century work environment, is interdisciplinary. In traditional classroom education, subjects are, for the most part, kept separate, and yet students are expected to transition to the work environment and somehow know how to think across disciplines. The makerspace becomes the ideal complement to traditional educational models, as it is, by nature, collaborative and cross-disciplinary.
Dowell notes, “In the makerspace, they’re learning that there’s a range of possibilities and that you can solve problems in new ways that you had never thought of. Here’s a community that can help you get there. And I don’t think they learn that in a typical course environment where there are prescribed instructions and a set sequence.” The makerspace environment accelerates student capacity to see the interconnectedness of problems and solutions, and it grants them the agency to be nimble and innovative. These benefits not only translate to a brighter work future for students, but they’re also essential life skills to cultivate.
Final Thoughts from the Field
As someone who has been focused on creating, cultivating, and growing a makerspace for the past 12 years, Dowell shares, “I’ve been consistently surprised by the solutions that people come up with — the unique and creative ideas that students, faculty, staff, and all who intersect with the space have. It’s really renewing to see how people solve problems and to find ways to let them do that. The most unexpected thing is the magic that just emerges from people given the opportunity or the environment in which to express themselves.”
Be sure to check out the Folsom Lake College profile video from CCC Maker:
This article first appeared in the CCC Maker publication titled “Makerspace Impact: Implementation Strategies & Stories of Transformation” (2019).
