The Makerspace at NJIT Wins $125,000 in a U.S. Small Business Administration Competition
The Makerspace at NJIT, New Jersey Institute of Technology’s training-focused, rapid prototyping facility, has won a $125,000 award from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to advance careers in advanced manufacturing.
NJIT is one of 12 winners of the SBA’s MaTCH Pilot Competition, a program designed to help workers secure entry-level advanced manufacturing jobs and the option to pursue further training in an apprenticeship program or a college education in advanced manufacturing. The university’s makerspace secured a top-tier award designated for facilities with “successful existing programs with a strong history of training and/or workforce development.”
“Makerspaces are uniquely positioned to help innovate training for the workforces of today and tomorrow, and spur economic development across the country,” said Chris Pilkerton, the agency’s acting administrator, in announcing the awards. “Through the MaTCH competition, the winners will be able to directly support vocational education, develop apprenticeships and cultivate access to entrepreneurship. In addition, I am pleased to note that multiple winners are located in Opportunity Zones where job creation and investments are moving forward to revitalize communities.”
The Makerspace at NJIT is central to both the university’s hands-on learning mission and its growing relationship with New Jersey’s manufacturing community. Students and faculty use it on a daily basis to create devices for research experiments, club team contests and research capstone projects, among other ventures. But it is also available to industrial partners to participate as mentors, trainers, and instructors, for companies to collaborate with students and faculty members on research and development projects, and for employees to receive customized training tailored to their needs.
The equipment inside ranges from small 3D printers to large industrial machines such as an additive metal 3D printer that uses powdered stainless steel to print parts, an optical scanner that effectively digitizes real life objects, enabling reverse engineering, and a continuous fiber 3D printer that is capable of depositing strands of carbon fiber, fiberglass or Kevlar inside 3D-printed parts, to add considerable strength.
The 11,000 sq. ft. facility is currently expanding by 10,000 sq. ft. in order to provide additional space for collaboration, including open areas to congregate, breakout rooms to brainstorm ideas, training rooms for instruction and additional CAD stations and equipment to design, build and test early prototypes.
Daniel Brateris, the director of experiential learning for Newark College of Engineering (NCE), who designed the facility, described it as a place for “users to bring ideas from concept to reality in one facility.”
The makerspace plays a growing role in NJIT’s curriculum and educational mission.
Providing for extensive experimentation was one of the reasons for starting NCE’s new School of Applied Engineering. Using the Makerspace, the school helps NCE meet the spiraling demand in the job market for applied engineering technologists in industries reliant upon production, manufacturing, process control and instrumentation.
“It is easier, cleaner and much less expensive to teach engineering using simulators, but this approach will only take the student so far in understanding the real-life behavior of devices and systems. Sometimes it is beneficial, even essential, to make your fingers dirty," notes NCE Dean Moshe Kam.