How the Innovation Center Helped Me Realize My Hidden Talents as a Re-Entry Student
By Nicole Shuman
I grew up in Los Angeles, and prior to moving to Folsom, I had a 15-year career in big box retail, holding many roles in the district: leadership roles, working with HR, inventory, loss prevention. My parents had separated, and my twin brother, mom, and I had decided to purchase a house together in Folsom and relocate. On my 30th birthday, coming back from Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas, I flew back into Los Angeles, my mom met me down the airport, and we drove up together. I was promised a job with the company that I was working for, and I stayed in L.A. an extra month living with friends to make this happen. But when I came up to Folsom, the company didn’t have a position for me.
I went from making $80,000 a year to now being offered $12 an hour to do the entry-level position that I started at 10 years ago when I was originally hired. It’s disheartening to know that you can dedicate every fiber of your being to the people, the message, and the value of a company, and then they can’t even come through for you. It was heartbreaking, and it destroyed me. That was one of the very lowest lows of my life — to come out after all of that hard work and to be in a completely new location, no real education other than a high school diploma, no friends, no clout, nothing. I was a nobody from nowhere in this small town, and it was awful.
So, I bounced around minimum wage jobs just trying to make ends meet because now I had a mortgage to pay. Then, at some point, my mom said, “You know, just quit your jobs, go back to school, and get your education.” They say it really takes you hitting rock bottom to make those realizations. I always dreamed about having a four-year degree and being educated like some of my good friends that I look up to from high school, but I thought “No, that’s not for me. I’m not good at anything, and I don’t really know what I want to do.” I knew how to manage big box retail and I knew how to make future leaders, but how was I going to sit in a classroom? I was 32 then.
Getting Involved with the Innovation Center
I enrolled in Folsom Lake College in spring of 2016, and that was the start of it. I signed up as a biology major, just because I like birds and science. I then got involved with Hands On Science, which hosts hands-on activities every Friday that introduce students to the various professors, programs, and science-related things on campus. One of the activities in fall of 2016 had us take a trip to the makerspace, the FLC Innovation Center.
At the time, I had no idea what a makerspace was. It wasn’t really open to the public and there were just a couple of students in there. But that day, I happened to bump into Zack Dowell, the head of the Innovation Center, and we started a conversation that changed everything. I commented on a 3D-printed hand there and told him about how I was interested in doing wing, beak, and talon modeling for birds. And then I just started going off about how much I love birds and how I’d like to take all these birds that are grounded due to some genetic misfortune and put them back in the air through the use of materials science, engineering, and bio-fabrication. Zack was totally jazzed about it, and for once in my life, these far-fetched ideas that I had seemed within reach.
I just kept coming back to the makerspace, and then in spring of 2017, Zack asked me to join the team as an official makerspace facilitator. At the end of the day, all of us in the space are essentially doing the same job, which is serving the students that enter the space. I currently hold a team lead role, kind of that middle person between Zack the staff, the community, and the faculty, just trying to keep things in line and functioning. My previous careers had me creating and implementing training systems and protocols, so I used those skill sets to help build sustainability features for the makerspace.
Since our involvement in the CCC Maker initiative, the FLC Innovation Center has become the main space on campus where students can make stuff. This is the only space that’s interdisciplinary and where everybody can connect around one common goal to make rad stuff and start obtaining the soft skills and tech skills necessary to be successful beyond community college.
Periodic Table Project
One day, Greg McCormac, our Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering, showed me a photo of a giant periodic table of elements on the side of the chemistry building at the University of Murcia in Spain. He said, “Wouldn’t it be really neat if we could do something like that here?” I proposed we could do something indoors, and it would be an awesome project for one of our CCC Maker internships. I offered to be the technical advisor and chemistry professor Max Mahoney became our client along with Greg.
We wanted to create something that would be way more interactive, way more unique, and that didn’t exist yet, so I recruited a team of interns and we started the design thinking process, slowly bringing on more individuals with special skills sets as the need arose. Teeing off all of their passions, the project grew and became more extensive, as did the team. Our student interns are gaining skill sets, including soft skills, building their portfolios, and learning how to propose a plan and budget.
With my retail career experience, I knew how to do many of these things, and so I got to coach the students along in this process. Being that older, mature, re-entry student, I have a special outlook on the entire way I navigate my projects, education, and career, and I’ve enjoyed sharing that with younger students through the makerspace. Basically, our student interns are getting applied knowledge of the jobs that they’re going to have in the future through working on this project.
Future Plans
This was my last semester at Folsom Lake College and I’m off to UC Davis to get my degree in Material Science Engineering and Math and then head off to grad school. Then hopefully, fingers crossed, I plan to head back to Folsom Lake College, where I can continue the legacy that I’m building there with the students. I’d love to maintain involvement with the space, partnering with Zack to continue this Maker Movement that has really changed my life for the very, very best. I owe a lot of gratitude to Zack for changing my outlook when I was down and defeated. Zack saw something in me, and hopefully I can continue to give back to the makerspace community in his honor.
This article first appeared in the CCC Maker publication titled “Makerspace Impact: Implementation Strategies & Stories of Transformation” (2019).
