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Priorities

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1. Supporting the people that mentor our students in making

A makerspace is not merely a place, and its value is not merely in equipment; the real power flows from teachers who create structured educational experiences and mentors who support students as they engage with material. Teaching physical design and making requires great human energy and creativity, predominantly provided by lecturers, technical staff, and student course assistants. Investing in these making mentors is our first priority as we rise to meet the educational needs of the next generation of leaders. Our faculty also play a vital role, mentoring these mentors and teaching making courses themselves, and should be recognized and rewarded for these activities.

2. Supporting accessible, effective design and making courses in every discipline

To create a making curriculum that excites each student in our diverse undergraduate population requires an equally diverse set of courses in physical design and making. Our first curricular priority is to create new, accessible courses that span many disciplines, each with field-specific learning goals, and each intended to address the learning needs of a different group of students. We also seek to enable more students access to the most popular of our existing courses, add making courses that fill gaps in our degree programs, and provide support to instructors for adding new making elements to their courses. We seek to entice, not require, students to elect to have an educational experience involving physical design and making by creating excellent, appealing educational opportunities for all students.

3. Coordinating the making community at Stanford

Our final priority is to organize. We seek to develop new resources and send them where they are needed most, allowing makerspaces and making courses to overcome current limitations due to staff, equipment, materials, or space, and increasing student access to experiences in physical design and making. We seek to enable specialization, deepening and broadening the making possibilities on campus as a whole. We seek to give all students pathways to access all of our makerspaces, and to raise awareness of these incredible organizations. And we seek, with intention, to cultivate a diverse, supportive, and campus-wide Stanford community united by making.