Rachel Yeates, Campus Carrier Managing Editor
During late nights in McAllister Hall you can find a group of dedicated students camped out in the HackBerry Lab. They aren’t there because they’re being paid. They’re not there because they have to be. They’re there because they’re part of the quickly growing community of students and staff in the new creative technologies department.
“I remember nights when I was working … and there was maybe Zane and max five other people,” junior Meghan Dooling said. “Now, there are sometimes fifteen people in there at once.”
The lab space, their current headquarters, is a reclaimed storage room on the first floor of McAllister. Six hundred square feet that, according to Zane Cochran, visiting instructor of creative technologies, accommodated around 125 students throughout last semester.
“It does get pretty tight in here,” Cochran said. “Over the last year, we’ve worked with the administration here at Berry, and this semester, fingers crossed, we’ll actually be getting a new building.”
The new space will likely be a modular building located between the Emery Barns.
“It’ll be about 3,600 square feet, so about six times this space,” Cochran said. “We’re hoping to see that on the ground before the end of the semester.”
The creative technologies major now boasts 27 majors and five minors, and the department is growing.
“We don’t just teach students how to make physical prototypes,” Cochran said. “We look at the classes that we teach and the program as a prototype itself, and we want to make it better and better.”
He thinks the space will provide a better learning environment for students, and senior Maciel Smith agrees.
“If the professor is working on one specific machine, it’s impossible for everyone to see what’s going on,” Smith said. “The bigger space is going to be a really, really nice help.”
The lab is open to students regardless of major.
“My research with the physics department wouldn’t have been possible without the 3-D printers and software knowledge I learned from the lab itself,” senior Vedant Mehta said.
According to Cochran, creative technology goes “hand in hand with entrepreneurship.” The interdisciplinary department’s introductory course began as an upper level business class.
“One of the real proponents for a lot of the work that’s been going on in this lab is Dean John Grout [of the Campbell School of Business],” Cochran said. “He’s what we call a ‘maker.’ He likes to experiment with technologies and make things. He’s the one who bought the first 3-D printer for this space.”
For many students, the draw of the department lies in it being, at its core, about hands-on problem solving.
“You take what you have and build with it,” senior Travis Helton said. “You find your problem and you figure out the answer to it.”
Dooling says she’s benefitted from this approach.
“You learn by doing,” she said. “I feel like I have learned a whole lot more by actively participating.”
Students of all majors are welcome to take advantage of the lab space. Hackathons are held the third Friday of every month. They are 4-hour events open to all makers no matter their medium of choice, anything from circuitry to sushi.