The Makerspace, located in Johnson Memorial Building, saw more than 100 students complete introductory coursework or project work during the 2025–26 academic year.
Director Daniel Houghton notes that Makerspace students do more than build things; they identify a need or problem, design and refine a prototype (often several) of an object that solves that problem, and then create a final product. He calls this process an “emotional journey” because students often run into unexpected challenges. They discover they have misidentified the problem, for instance, or their initial designs aren’t workable.
“What does it mean that what you thought up first isn’t what you are actually going to make?” Houghton asks. “What tends to happen is what you end up making is so much more delightful and real and impactful than whatever your idea was.”
Take a look at what Makerspace students have been working on:
- A 24-square-foot sign for the beloved Taste of India restaurant in town. Now hanging 36 feet above the Otter Creek, it is finally visible from Main Street. Houghton declares it “strong enough to outlast the building that it’s mounted on.”
- A writing desk with a live-edge slab in homage to George Nakashima for the Mahaney Arts Center.
- A 70-foot-long hydroponic garden encircling the Statistics Department common room for the students working all hours on their mastery of stats and data science. The pump and refill are fully automated, and this summer students are building an automated nutrient delivery system.
- Twelve weeks of electronics exploration for local middle school students. Makerspace students led classes first at the Isley Library, then at Shiretown, the lunch and creemee spot, and finally at Tinker and Smithy, the local game store. After graduation, Caleb Boateng ’26 will continue the adventure by teaching kids in the Bronx at his old stomping ground, City Squash, where he will build an electronics-focused Makerspace for the STEM education of the young athletes there.
- Graduation gifts—charcuterie boards—for the cross-country team, inscribed with art by one of the runners.
- Four hundred custom sign holders for Dining Services so that their new digital signs can show students the allergy information they need when choosing a meal. It took 17 drafts to fine-tune all the functional and aesthetic details before mass production could begin.
- Forty-eight custom Nordic ski boot drying hooks for the ski team.
- Steel yokes for the Dance Department so that the stage crew could double the amount of gear in their lighting grid.
- Replacement steering arms and outrigger mounts for the crew team. Broken parts are hard to come by.
- Plumbing components for Dining Services for their system where the original replacement parts no longer exist.
- A shelter on the Trail Around Middlebury off the Morgan Horse Farm entrance. Middlebury Area Land Trust campers are using it all summer long.
- A resting chair for the new disc golf course.
- An Adirondack chair made from an old whiskey barrel.
- An ancient lyre called a tagelharpa.
- The prototype for a new pavilion in Battell Park. Construction is set for next summer.
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