Lafayette College’s entrepreneurial hub, the Dyer Center, is carving out a place for student creators from all disciplines with its creative workshop, the Makerspace.
“It’s an arm of the Dyer Center, but we like to think that it’s more of a student initiative where they can come and do student projects, work on prototypes or just play around,” said Jolene Cardassi, the Dyer Center’s administrative coordinator.
The Makerspace offers 3D printers, a laser cutter, soldering materials, art supplies and hand tools, all available for student use.
Aleksandra Florence ‘28, one of the workshop’s three student technicians, emphasized the “interdisciplinary-ness” of the Makerspace.
“The intention of the Makerspace is to be collaborative across all majors, to allow students to have general space to come in and play with their creativity in different ways,” Florence said.
Florence added that students who are not engineers often have difficulty accessing other workshop spaces on campus. Even for engineers, these spaces may have restrictive schedules.
She and the other technicians, Samuel Adgate ‘26 and Martín Ayala ‘26, look after the equipment and assist students using the Makerspace.
“I’m just there as a resource,” Ayala said. He added that he enjoyed “helping other people get creative.”
The technicians said they have seen students use the space for a variety of class and personal projects, anything from board games to lightsabers.
Kashif Chopra ‘26 said he plans to use the workshop to create sensors that detect if campus laundry machines are operational.
“It really helps students be able to have a space where they can build stuff and try out things and make stuff,” Chopra said.
“It’s created a unique area for them to just be able to play around with stuff that might not necessarily be permitted for some of the other spaces on campus,” Florence said.
Students can access the Makerspace by emailing the Dyer Center or scanning a QR code outside the space. Once trained by one of the technicians, students will be granted 24/7 access to the workshop.
“It’d be very nice to have more people in here,” Adgate said.
The technicians also said that the Makerspace hopes to grow its tool selection and expand its outreach through programming and workshops.
“We were recently talking within the team to make a workshop for hand warmers,” Ayala said, also mentioning possible workshops for creating door decorations and key holders.
“It’s a resource for everybody to just show up and get creative,” he said.
