Making Ideas Real: Why Makerspaces are Important to Liberal Arts Education”?

Makerspace organizer Jeff Sturges, class of 1999, returns to Middlebury college to share his 10+ years of experience building communities through the creation of makerspaces. Making is transforming thoughts into things. Maker learning happens when people exchange skills, knowledge, and experience while making things together. A makerspace is a place where people gather to make and learn. The emerging “maker movement” embraces a DIO (doing it ourselves) ethic and encourages learning while doing. Is this type of learning at odds with a liberal arts education? If so, why? If not, how can making amplify liberal arts?

Join us for a presentation and discussion of these questions, along with the question of what a makerspace would mean for Middlebury.