Makerspace Education & Design Lab Manager

The Keller Center will be opening an open-access design lab. The space will consist of four rooms: one traditional makerspace, one woodshop, and two creative classrooms utilized for creative imagination and low-fidelity prototyping. With the opening of its first design lab, Keller Center has three primary goals in mind:

 

1) To create an open and welcoming space for individuals from all levels of making, design, and innovation experience, and creating an inclusive community of designers and innovators on the Princeton campus

2) To encourage Princeton students to use making to illuminate various academic and educational pathways

3) To create a design and innovation network on the Princeton campus that involves collaboration with various making entities on campus, and encourages students to work outside the normal structures of their academic disciplines

 

In staffing the design lab, we hope to hire a Makerspace Educator and Design Lab Manager who along with other colleagues will be stewards of these goals, and help build a community of engaged participants eager to explore innovative and exploratory approaches to learning. Also engaged with Keller’s open-access design lab is a community administrator, responsible for helping build the Princeton design community, and Graduate Student Educators, responsible for guiding students through the intellectual and experiential processes of making.

 

To that end, the Keller Center is hoping to hire a Makerspace Educator & Design Lab Manager to handle several co-curricular and curricular responsibilities within the space, including building a vibrant co-curricular portfolio of programming for a diverse group of stakeholders, advising students on their design journeys, teaching and curriculum creation, and lab management.

Build a vibrant co-curricular portfolio of activities engaging a diverse group of stakeholders:

• Create a portfolio of co-curricular educational activities in the design lab. A goal of the design lab is to engage a community that spans the breadth of the University, including those who do not see themselves as makers, designers, and innovators. The programs in the design lab will need to engage this community in a fun but low-barrier fashion that will both introduce them to making and educate them, while encouraging them to come back to the design lab. Designing these co-curricular educational programs will require both creative and strategic skills on the part of the Makerspace Educator & Design Lab Manager.

 

Advise participants in the design lab on their design journeys either individually or through effective management of the Graduate Student Educators

 

• Provide mentorship and guidance for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty engaged in making in a variety of academic disciplines. The Makerspace Educator and Design Lab Manager would work with students to help them plan out their projects by giving them advice on tools, project milestones, and advice about potential academic and social impacts of their project.
• Train students on all equipment within the space, and create training guidelines for each piece of equipment (i.e. a 3D printer may only require 2 hours of training and little supervision to use, whereas a wood saw would require 5 hours of training and a staff member present for supervisory purposes).
• Help hire Graduate Student Educators on a semester or yearly basis, and subsequently manage those Student Educators and help them be effective facilitators, teachers, and mentors in the space.

Teaching and curriculum creation :

 

• Teaching responsibilities, including teaching existing design courses such as the foundational design course as well as developing an advanced design thinking course

 

Lab management:

 

• Maintain the makerspace equipment so that it is functional and safe, and managing inventory for makerspace participants across all four spaces within the makerspace. This includes making all inventory purchases, as well as updating software and equipment with relevant patches and updates.
• Advise on new equipment purchases, and upholding a working knowledge of what equipment and tools are becoming most useful or necessary in the field of making.
• Work in partnership with the community administrator to manage the yearly budget and planned expenditures for the space.

The ideal candidate will have the following: 

• Possess a Bachelor's degree at minimum but more advanced degrees would be highly preferred
• Managerial experience and would be an effective leader for the graduate student staff in the design lab
• Possess a passion for how making intersects with design, entrepreneurship and innovation.
• Committed to building upon existing curriculum and creating new and dynamic curriculum for Keller Center courses and for the makerspace.
• Excited to help stakeholders grow in the fields of making, design, and innovation, and would be willing to think creatively to achieve that growth
• Possess knowledge and experience with typical equipment found in design/ makerspaces such as 3D printing, large format printing and PCB/CNC mills, and helping others with these technologies.
• Comfortable with utilizing and teaching others the software associated with these technologies.
• Passionate about technology and its implications for making, as well as encouraging others in the field.
• Enjoys working, guiding and interacting with students and the broader campus community.
• Comfortable interacting with diverse stakeholders ranging from students, to faculty to off campus partners.
• Ability to work with little to no supervision
• Ability to develop and implement a vision to meet the above objectives.

 

Masters degree or beyond preferred.

 

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. EEO IS THE LAW

36.25

No

Yes

180 days

No

No

No

Mid-Senior Level

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