CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Adam Savage's Maker Tour: Carnegie Mellon's IDeATe Lab

Tested: In his last Pittsburgh stop, Adam visits Carnegie Mellon University, which offers a minor in making and whose IDeATe network exposes students to multiple approaches to problem solving and cross-campus collaboration.

3 comments:

Claire Krueger said...


As much as I love videos I can’t scim them the same way I do the articles. It makes me super excited to be a part of IDeATe classes next semester. The ever growing bridge between creative and technology is highlighted in this video. It was weird seeing them in the stairwell of Hunt and imagining that at one point in time our paths literally crossed. I don’t know Adam Savage that well but from my understanding a lot of my classmates were really disappointed that they missed him. None of them knew he was in town let alone on campus. I did find the question, “what was the motive for putting the maker space in the basement of a library” funny. It probably wasn’t an intentional choice but the issue the school of drama and I’m assuming schools across campus have, is a lack of space. The answer reminded me of the way I used to worm my way out of doing actual conceptual work in high school. It’s always weird to see day to day places like hunt or the cut of the CFA j chilling as a background throughout the video.

Unknown said...

While I agree that CMU prides itself on its interdisciplinary nature and is inherent structure such that the arts and technology schools are close to one another in order to foster innovation, the school has largely lacked in actually following up on its interdisciplinary nature. I know School of Drama students who have never set foot in Gates and School of Computer Science students who have never walked into Purnell, and this is a huge problem.

I agree with the idea that Hunt is a place for everyone because of its nature as a library, but the video forgot to mention that CMU additionally houses an Engineering Library – Sorrells – that largely targets all of the engineering and computer science students and leaves out the others. Thus, most engineering students may find themselves studying in Sorrells, not in Hunt. They also talked a lot about the makerspace in Hunt basement but never really toured it or showed anything other than projects in action. I hope that CMU will actually manage to be the interdisciplinary school it claims to be, but as of right now the university has a lot more room to grow.

Chris Calder said...

I would like to start out with mentioning how bummed I am that I missed Adam Savage. I think it is so cool that he was here, walking around this campus and seeing the resources that CMU has to offer. Although I am not an Ideate student I did have the opportunity of taking one the classes that is offered in the very maker space that this video is talking about. One thing that the video mentions and that i find very interesting and unique about the CMU campus is the disciplinary cross between the arts and engineering. I know many students from different disciplines that have reaped the benefits of this space and who would have not otherwise been exposed to these resources. I hope that the next time Adam stops by our campus he decided to swing by the CMU drama department to check out all of the cool resources that we have to offer students.