College programs for young makers?

Education

I had an email today from a reader, Kent Weakley, asking about maker-friendly colleges for his son.

My thirteen year old is crazy about Make magazine and all the great podcasts. He loves inventing and creating. Quick question – what are some good colleges that can help nurture the creative, innovative spirit of an inventor??? And what are some of the schools staff members, etc. of Make have attended? Thank you for your help!

What recommendations would you give this dad for his child? If you’re in a college program today, let us know what you think. If you’re a recent graduate, would you recommend the program to another young maker?

I wonder how much of a role college (or school in general) has played in the development of makers. Without prejudicing the answer, my own sense is that the formative development of makers has happened outside of school. But I’d like to hear whether college programs helped you improve your skills and stimulated your own development as a maker.

62 thoughts on “College programs for young makers?

  1. Dylan Vassallo says:

    I am a high school senior preparing to decide where I want to attend college. I, too, enjoy MAKE: Magazine and the maker culture, so this reader’s question was part of my thought process when I chose which universities to apply to. Though my making has happened outside of high school, I expect college to be an invaluable opportunity for me to further this hobby through classes, lab research, internships, etc. I will probably be attending UCLA, but one school that strikes me as especially maker-friendly is the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly for short) in beautiful San Luis Obispo, CA. Cal Poly has an excellent engineering program (ranked in the top of the nation), and the university’s oft-emphasized mantra is “hands-on learning.” They strive to get students creating (art, electronics, music, software, whatever their major entails) as soon as possible after they have learned the fundamentals of their course of study. When it comes time for the reader’s son to apply to college, I suggest he pay Cal Poly a visit. Good luck!

  2. Anonymous says:

    the easy answer is probably MIT, but the Carnegie-Mellon Robotics program is respectable too, no?

  3. No Such Reality says:

    “My thirteen year old is crazy about Make magazine and all the great podcasts. He loves inventing and creating. Quick question – what are some good colleges that can help nurture the creative, innovative spirit of an inventor???”

    How is your 13 year old enjoying school so far? Has it nurtured his “reative, innovative spirit”? Or is he on his way to learning random bits of information that he will have no use for and soon forget? If anyone disagrees with that view, watch “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” and explain to me why that show is so hard to many people and what exactly do those questions/answers that 5th graders “know” have to do with anything useful? If they were useful bits of information used in daily life or jobs, why don’t people know the answers to them?

    Long story short, he’s better off getting a lifetime subscription to Make magazine and building stuff on his own. He’ll learn way more than a “formal” education and have practical knowledge. Or he can enroll in college and put down sorting algorithm design and matrix algebra on his resume.

  4. technoplastique says:

    My makerness happened well outside of school. Choose a college program that you will enjoy, one that teaches you good math skills, or one that doesn’t take very much time. I spent college frustrated that I didn’t have enough time to do what I really wanted to do because I was stuck in lab classes and under mounds of homework. If I knew then what I know now I would have spent a lot less time on my classwork and more time doing things that interest me. (Probably not the best thing to tell a 13 year old, but it’s my honest truth.)

  5. No Such Reality says:

    Here’s a MIT course lecture video for your viewing enjoyment.

    Lec 25 | MIT 18.085 Computational Science and Engineering I, Fall 2008

  6. Lee Gibson says:

    There are plenty of good opportunities at any school with a decent engineering program. Cal Poly, MIT, Renessaler (sp?), or Carnegie Mellon are all, of course, stupendous options. I couldn’t afford any of ’em, so I wound up at a state school (University of Texas).

    I studied aeronautical engineering, because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If you want to build airplanes professionally, you pretty much need a degree. Had that not been the case, I would have explored programs that are traditionally classified as “vocational”. I’m going back now and trying to add those skills to my degree.

    As far as No Such Reality’s point, I’d agree that an engineering education isn’t necessary to be a lifetime Maker, but it sure can help pay the bills. And, it gives you a chance to do something you love. I count myself supremely lucky to be in that position, professionally.

    Step 1 is follow your heart. If you love electronics, study that. If you love cars, there are lots of good schools with automotive engineering programs and Formula SAE race car teams. Build a go-kart. Learn to autocross. For airplanes, lots of schools participate in various Design-Build-Fly competitions. (Check out the AIAA/Office of Naval Research contest, or the Autonomous Air Vehicles competitions.)

    One thing I discovered was that an engineering degree is long on theory, and short on application. If you want to make stuff, you’re going to want to get involved in an extracurricular competition or club. There are several available to high school students as well. (I’m thinking specifically of the unmanned submersible contest that was featured in Wired last year.)

    Having said all that, no reason to wait ’till college. Learn to weld. Learn to program ICs. Build a model aircraft. All of this stuff is well within the capabilities of a motivated teenager, and all of it will be good experience if you do decide you want to Do Engineering.

    (I learned when I was 3/4 of the way through my degree that being a fabricator would be Lots Of Fun.)

    I’m sure that a lot of people will disagree with me, but I wouldn’t feel worthy to call myself an engineer if I couldn’t build a machine with my own hands and troubleshoot it until it did what I wanted it to do. Don’t wait for somebody to give you a degree, and you don’t have to start with the space shuttle. Start simple, but start now!

  7. David says:

    If your child is considering schools like MIT or Stanford then Olin College (olin.edu) is “at the same level” and much more intimate and project-oriented–it should be on your radar. (Of course, it falls short of Cal Tech and co. in other ways.)

  8. Ian Sigsworth says:

    I’m currently a Mechanical Engineering major at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I personally love their engineering program, unlike what was said above, you’ll get plenty of practical experience in any decent engineering program – at least here, you can learn how to run machine tools, weld, CAD software, and there are many workshop courses in things such as robotics.

    In terms of MAKEing, the best thing college offers is some theory to put your practical knowledge in context with, and more importantly, RESOURCES! I have full access to a fully stocked machine shop, something which is invaluable in my work, and they often let me use scrap materials for my own projects, which saves a ton of money.

    The best recommendation I can make is check out some different schools (UCSB is great, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo also has a good engineering program if you’re on the west coast), see what they have to offer and what you want out of it. In the end, personal motivation will get you much farther than a going to the best school ever, but having both will do wonders.

    1. Lee Gibson says:

      My point wasn’t that I didn’t get good practical experience in college, because I did. My point was, if you just show up to class and do your homework, you’re not going to get maximum utility out of your investment in a university degree. You need to do more than just go to class. You need to get access to the machine shop, the wind tunnel, the composite layup facilities, whatever…and almost all of that happens outside the context of lecture and homework.

      You can get an engineering degree by just writing papers and doing lab work and being good at math. To me, the essence of engineering is making stuff and solving problems. You have to really hone your skills on your own time (with the University’s resources, for sure!) if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

  9. Andy says:

    Lee (and others) definitely has some excellent points. I’d like to add a few of my own. For reference, I’m a 4th year EE at GaTech. Here are a few of my thoughts – first generic, then specifically about GaTech (and some other schools).

    – Any school you go to (within reason) will have EXACTLY the same classwork. There is no difference between classes (in your first three years) at MIT, Olin or Vanderbilt.

    – HOWEVER, senior level and up specialty classes will depend heavily upon faculty. These classes are driven by the professors interests and generally speaking are better at more prestigious universities.

    – Which brings me to my most important point: COLLEGE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT. If you want to make stuff in college, you should do it – and it probably won’t be in class.

    – College is expensive – but it doesn’t have to be. CMU, MIT, Stanford, CalTech etc are not worth it. There are many excellent public universities which cost a very small fraction of the MIT’s of the world while delivering an education which rivals (often exceeds) schools like MIT. Those schools include anything in the UC school system, U Illinois, and Georgia Tech.

    – Every college I know of has a Student Govt (SGA). The SGA’s role is to provide money to students so they can do *whatever* they want. It is perfectly reasonable to start your own club (like a maker club etc) if one doesn’t exist – BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT.

    – Nevertheless, there are some schools which are more “maker friendly” than others. Look for things like lab classes, senior design labs and student orgs. Look for and robotics clubs.

    In the second half of my essay, I’ll talk a little about GaTech.

    At GaTech we have GT Motorsports (Formula SAE), GT Offroad (SAE Mini Baja), AUVSI submarines, Arial Robotics (helicopters), Futuretruck (hybrid car team), SolarJackets (solar car), we have a Dorkbot chapter (big Wired spread recently), Wreck Racing (grassroots motorsports)m Solar Pentathalon (energy efficient house) and on and on.

    My experience is in RoboJackets, the student robotics club. We have four teams, RoboCup (robotic soccer), IGVC (like mini DARPA Grand Challenge), Battlebots, and FIRST (big outreach program).

    We share a machine shop with Motorsports, Offroad and Wreck Racing. It’s very fun. We have all the good toys, welders, lathes, CNC stuff (we just got a HAAS 3 axis!). All of our members have side projects. We have seen everything from sidewalk printers to fusion reactors (seriously – he’s now a professor).

    GaTech has a fun atmosphere. Every fall, we have a huge art car parade for homecoming – none of the vehicles can be powered conventionally. We have seen jet engines, swings, water and marry-go-rounds.

    There is a thriving community for undergraduate research – where students get to do “maker” things for pay and credit. There is a large Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center which is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the robotics community.

    My department, Electrical Engineering, has a big board where they publish clippings of senior design projects that have made it to Make, Hackaday etc.

    Finally, GaTech is in Atlanta. It’s warm here (today it was in the 60s) Boston, Pittsburgh etc are cold :)

    If you’re interested, check out robojackets.org, email one of the officers, we’d be happy to organize a tour etc if you’re in town. We’ll be at the FIRST championships (one of the robojackets alumni is on the game design committee). Swing by and say hi!

  10. Peter Horvath says:

    As a current student at http://itp.nyu.edu I’m involved in most of the activities which go on that might be of interest to young makers:

    * Open-source collaboration through “design thinking”
    * Physical and embedded computing
    * Rapid prototyping with Arduino and C
    * Industrial Design — digital fabrication, CNC, laser
    * Generative algorithmic art — openFrameworks/Processing
    * Network communication — XBee/RFID/Bluetooth
    * Robotics and tele-presence
    * Interactive video — MAX/Jitter/Pure Data/
    * iPhone Development — Objective-C/Cocoa
    * New Instruments for Musical Expression (NIME)
    * Interactive telephony systems — Asterisks
    * Kinetic sculptures

    And that’s only skimming the surface.

  11. Tom Anderson says:

    I think high school is the best time to learn to use tools and make things. In college concentrate on theory. Things that seem trendy, interesting and important now will fade quickly. Theory lasts a lifetime, and college is a good (although expensive) place to learn it.

    College labs seem to be universally understocked. Use them to learn more theory. Do lots of simple things to prove that you know exactly how things work. Patch the holes in your knowledge.

    After college, work so that you can afford making. One of the difficulties for recent graduates is finding space to build things. Even if you have money and time, lack of space is frustrating. Maybe you can find an interesting group of people who are sharing a space.

    There are some interesting large projects in colleges, but I would stay away from them. Some professor might be selling your work to ‘someone’, probably not paying you, and you’ll be so busy making the prototype thingamajig that you won’t graduate. There is plenty of time to build amazing projects for other people after you graduate, and you can earn real money doing it. Then you’ll have something to invest in your own projects.

    But get started right away. No sense in waiting for college. Time there is too valuable to do as much tinkering as you would like.

    -Tom Anderson

    1. Lee Gibson says:

      I think it’s worth considering the fact that, if your prof sells your work for a zillion dollars, that means you’re doing zillion-dollar work.

      That makes for a really shiny resume.

      Experience working on a team and managing a project is every bit as valuable as theory. Both are critical to a successful career.

      If you’re only ever tinkering in your garage, sure! Who cares about project management. But if you want to make a living, learning how to work with (and lead and be led by) a team is critical.

  12. Joseph Flaherty says:

    You should take a look at the Dual degree option offered by the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. It offers a number of interesting benefits over some of the pure engineering programs.

    http://www.risd.edu/campus_initiatives_brown.htm

    – Deep emphasis on learning by doing. If you major in industrial or graphic design at RISD you will get lots of hands on time building projects. People I knew as undergrads didn’t always get that exp. at places like MIT.

    – Aesthetic skills. Combining mechanical aptitudes and a strong aesthetic sense can be a powerful pairing. Dual major in an engineering discipline and a design focused one could yield very cool results.

    – Fairly open schedules. There is a lot of work at both schools, but their curriculum are fairly “liberal” if you have a strong interest outside of a professors they will accommodate you in a number of ways.

    – RISD on its own is not a bad option for Makers either. Not so robotics focused, but you have 24/7 access to metal, wood, and model shops and the freedom to make all sorts of interesting things from F1 race cars to slip cast vases to hacked electronics.

    I’m an alum from the RISD side and if you have any questions I’m glad to answer them!

    Joseph Flaherty

  13. Dale says:

    I’m a Mechanical Engineering Major at the Cooper Union in NYC. Cooper Union was founded by Peter Cooper, an inventor (and Maker?) who thought education should “be as free as air and water.” So every student at Cooper Union is here on a full tuition scholarship. Cooper only offers art, architecture and engineering, and is consistently one of the top undergraduate engineering schools. They say getting into cooper union is an achievement, graduating is an accomplishment. Getting to go here means your entire school is centered around engineering and since the school is small, you’re taught by only professors, who are more than willing (and demand at times) that you work with them outside of class. Anyways it’s a great pick for anyone who wants to go to school for engineering at a school that will demand 200+90e^i(pi)% from you.

  14. steve says:

    13 years old now? So 5 years till college is a full time proposition (normally).

    Until college:
    4 summers or so.
    apprentice him to a carpenter for a summer. Next summer a metal working fab shop. Next summer a machine shop cutting metal, plastics, etc.
    next summer (whatever else you can come up with! Welding, HVAC, Plumbing, etc).
    4 summers just being involved in 4 different trades will give one a head start as a maker.

    There are also 4 Christmas’s till college:

    First Christmas give him a small bandsaw, next a mill, a lathe, etc. Or buy them for yourself and make them available to him to use.

    You will be an asset on any college project team if you can add a lot of hands-on to your good academic credentials.

    Finally, start a web site for your projects, descriptions of each and lots of pictures of what you do.
    Great tool to sell yourself to colleges.

    My oldest son won a $10,000 grant from a national engineering group by taking a suitcase of several projects to the (10 person panel) interview, showing what he was already capable of doing.

    I offer this advice as a professional “maker”, a toolmaker by trade.

  15. Bob K says:

    Although my daughter is visiting CMU as I write this, I don’t think its the school that is Maker friendly as much as the individual instructor.

    As she parses through her final choices, I tell her to find a school with good mentors. For example, she just finished a first year physics class at Chabot JR College, where she had a group project where she was required to design a solar power supply for a laptop. The instructor was just recognized as Association of the California Community Colleges teacher of the year.

    http://www.insidebayarea.com/dailyreview/ci_11972566

    Sure, administrative staff at individual institutions can nurture obtaining these types of instructors, but I think they can be found everywhere if you look.

    Here’s another cool one:

    http://eastbayschools.net/node/416

  16. Doug says:

    I’m a mechanical technician at Columbia Univ Astrophysics Lab and I can honestly say that my experience as a maker far out-shined any diploma in getting a job here. Machining, (useful) programming, prototyping, and familiarity with a assembly techniques were all things I picked up while out of school.

    I would say support your son in any way possible with his interests and let the career concerns happen as they may. I am very grateful my parents gave me a wide berth when it came to my miscellaneous building projects and hare-brained schemes. Today, I’m helping build an orbital x-ray telescope (thank you, Construx).

    A maker is a maker no matter what they do for a paycheck.

  17. Garrick says:

    This one is near and dear to my heart, but for someone with a penchant for industrial artistic pursuits (mine is blacksmithing), it’s worth looking at the Crucible. Perhaps not as a formal college, but worth looking into.

    http://www.thecrucible.org/

  18. Jeff says:

    A lot of engineers have been chiming in with some excellent advice. I took a slightly different path.

    I’ve got a BS in Physics. It’s a lot of theory and how to think, and if you emphasize experimental courses (lab courses), you can get a lot of hands-on time with some really neat technology. My physics department had a two quarter electronics course which was super practical–it was meant to get you building circuits in a lab with a minimum of fuss.

    I’m going to echo that young makers need to look for schools with good extracurricular opportunities. As good as the physics labs were, it was more about understanding a setup that was already working. So, SAE, USFIRST, any of the other myriad of robotics, automotive and aircraft competitions and clubs are awesome. There is another avenue that should not be overlooked. I went to the University of Washington which had a FIRST team when I was there (which I participated in as a freshman, totally awesome). However, UW is also a gigantic research institution. Big sprawling research schools are great if you are out to make your own education. There’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on in the research labs, and they use an army of undergrad makers to run the places. I learned most of my shop skills and soldering technique in a lab underneath the physics building. Hard sciences labs (physics, chemistry, &c.) can give you a chance to play with stuff you might get to touch otherwise. 5 Tesla superconducting magnets are AWESOME! Also, Liquid Nitrogen never, ever gets boring (and just once, I got to see frozen nitrogen–it looks like snow made of glass).

    So, don’t overlook lab opportunities. Don’t overlook chemistry and physics. The theory heavy EE courses bored me to tears. So, I would look for SAE, robotics competitions, and a vibrant research community. This puts places like University of Washington, UT Austin, and UC Berkeley on the map, as well as a lot of other large state schools. Again, as others have said, don’t overlook the big state school in your state. They might just be the deal of the century (my wife’s tuition for one year was more than I spent in five years, and I got a lot out of my college career).

    One final piece of advice, get to know and impress three professors. If he decides to go to grad school, he’ll generally need three letters of recommendation. Also, the higher his undergrad grades, the better.

    As far as high school and the next few years goes, do as much as you can outside of class. The only thing I learned in that time that I truly cared about and use regularly is the programming I taught myself. I went to one of the best high schools in Washington, and my course work was eminently forgetable. So, he needs to know where he wants to go. If it is going to be an elite school like Stanford or MIT, he needs to get the best grades. Period. States schools generally have more lax requirements, particularly from residents. High school grades are for getting into college and getting your real education. In the meantime, I would skip summer school and spend that time learning to use shop tools, programming, fixing up and tricking out a car (my major regret was not taking a friend’s advice and fixing up a Maverick).

    Best of luck. It’s a fun life. And, now, I must get on with my day.

  19. Pete Marchetto says:

    A summary of my advice and experiences:
    http://petmar.blogspot.com/

  20. John Ryding says:

    I agree with the above Pete in the above comment, for college-bound makers, the extracurricular activities and research project are where they will find the desire to bring ideas to life. Classes give one the foundation to understand their field a bit better, but the experiences that allowed me to work on my ideas with others as passionate as I were never found in class. This isn’t a mistake by the classes, they must accommodate to the lowest common denominator so that everyone understands the topic.

    The places that I learned the most were during internships, research projects, and most of all, from my peers. Surrounding myself with people that think big, invent, and have the desire to bring things to life has been what has allowed me to flourish in ways i have only dreamed of.

    Yes, a college degree is important, and an amazing way to network with people equally interested in a topic as much as you are, but the experiences that your son may be looking for will be found in the projects he takes on outside of the classroom.

  21. Michael Hiemstra says:

    I like Eric Michaud’s plan for setting up hackerspaces across the country to be education for the disenfranchised.

    http://davemakes.com/2009/02/hello-interview-with-eric-michaud.html

  22. College programs for young makers? Becky Stern says:

    As a maker/crafter here on staff, I’ll offer my two cents as well. I went to art school, Parsons School of Design (in NYC) to be exact. The Design & Technology program is similar to NYU’s ITP program (mentioned above), but offers undergrad study as well. I found that since I was studying with mostly grad students, expectations for innovation were higher, and I was certainly able to do whatever I wanted, whether it be hardware and electronics hacking, programming (mainly graphics and web apps), or even sound and motion graphics. It’s expensive, but some folks (like me) have very generous parents. Parsons is where my maker-ness developed and with class titles like “geek graffiti,” “making wireless toys,” and even a departmental band made up of circuit-bent-toy instruments, how can you go wrong? =]

    http://dt.parsons.edu/

  23. MJ says:

    My university, the University of Alabama, offers the perfect program for makers. In New College (http://www.as.ua.edu/nc/ ), you make your own course of study! The website says:

    “New College is the University of Alabama’s commitment to providing personalized higher education for those students who need and desire that special attention. We are an interdisciplinary liberal arts program where students craft individualized courses of study consistent with their interests, aptitude, temperament, and skills. Each student, with the assistance of a faculty mentor, builds a course of study that includes traditional coursework, community-based learning, undergraduate research opportunities, and self-directed study. We believe our emphasis on student choice and responsibility promotes the creativity, flexibility and adaptability necessary for effective participation in the emergent communities of the future.”

    I’m a business student, but I have friends in New College and they all love it. AND they learn a lot about the precise field in which they want to work post-graduation.

  24. me says:

    There are programs that can help a 13 year old in high school that are sponsored by colleges. the NCJETS http://www.ncjets.uncc.edu/ is one I am most familiar with.

    Engineering Technology is what my undergraduate degree is in, and I found it to be WAY more hands-on and interesting than the regular Electrical Engineering degree (I spent my first 2 years in the latter discipline.)

    I’m now in Grad school for EE, and it differs a lot form the undergrad program because the focus is more hands on.

    Overall, most of the stuff I learned and accomplished as an undergrad occurred with my side projects. Anyone who relies on school alone to teach them isn’t much of a true student. Many people I graduated with made straight A’s in undergrad, but most of the really KNOW nothing.

    Foster the tendencies towards engineering, but do projects outside of school as much as you can as well.

  25. Dallas McPheeters says:

    As an elementary school computer teacher, I have focused on teaching Podcasting and video blogging skills. The 50,000 plus students in our district are working on Windows 2000 and learning how to use M. Office… a bit last century don’t you think?

    So we set out to create a Mac lab and now students come to school early to work on the computers. They stay in from recess to use the computers. We have created movies and more and the community is excited. I watch 5th graders create presentations using open source programs about which many High schoolers are ignorant.

    Will the district climb on board with the hardware and infrastructure to support this program in all the schools? Doubtful. The economics don’t allow. So students remain ignorant of what they need to know in an increasingly competitive market. Sir Ken Robinson hits the nail on the head in this 19 minute presentation explaining how schools kill creativity. http://tinyurl.com/schoolskillcreativity

  26. Macadaciouse says:

    I doubt anyone will ever read this far down the list, but I just want to make sure nobody is forgetting the merit of art schools. I’m at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the sculpture and craft departments here are AMAZING. You can take classes in welding, carpentry, furniture design, CNC operation, metal casting, glass blowing – pretty much anything you can imagine. And the art focus fosters creativity, and isn’t that what this is all about?

    People always jump on the engineering bandwagon when they think about crafting much of anything, but the hands on skills of creating something might be harder to come by at a school without a sculpture department (and if you like robotics, there’s a class in kinetic sculptures you might want to take)

  27. Colton says:

    As a current student, and almost to the point of graduation, I would highly suggest Texas A&M. All school pride aside (hard to do here), I have definitely benefited from my experience here at A&M. Not only is it one of the most respected engineering programs in the nation, it is also a great place to be in general. Yes, it is in Texas and there are downsides to that which wont be addressed here. I am in a department called Engineering Technology, the Electronics branch of it, and it is awesome. Our labs, our projects, a lot of what we do could be featured on Make. Our Rube Goldberg team actually made Make face time last year. It’s a really hands on, application based program opposed to the theoretical approach taken by Electrical Engineering. It has definitely furthered my passion for innovation and creativity instead of stifle it like I feared school would.

    http://www.tamu.edu

  28. Chris says:

    While it may be true that top-tier universities have more creative individuals, I’m sure that most engineering schools have a community interested in making things and the Make culture.

    The Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) has a Maker club. Here’s their website: http://www.makeclub.org

  29. Anonymous says:

    As many people have pointed out, any good engineering school is a likely candidate. But MIT, however, has a creative “hacking” culture which can be great engineering feats. Everything from disassembling and reassembling a police car on the dome without being detected, to playing tetris on high rises, the acrhives can be found here http://hacks.mit.edu. Nerdiness is looked highly upon.

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DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

View more articles by Dale Dougherty

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