Innovate Labs has cut the ribbon on a new maker space location at the University of Connecticut’s satellite campus in downtown Hartford. The Hartford branch is the third Innovate Labs location to open, after one each at the main campus and in Stamford.
On the program webpage, Innovate Labs describes itself as “an educational research lab providing students of all disciplines with opportunities and resources to learn, explore, and develop industry-valued skills outside the classroom around emerging technology and analytics.”
The new Innovate Labs space in Hartford, located inside the Business Learning Center complex, offers students access to technologies like 3D printers, robotics and “tech kits” based around emerging technologies. They’ve identified a number of different fields related to technology, like data visualization, ecology and the “internet of things” and developed the kits with varying levels of difficulty — allowing students of any level of knowledge to learn these concepts according to its webpage.
The program is an offshoot of the Operations and Information Management (OPIM) department of the UConn School of Business, and hosts numerous events and workshops designed around problem-solving and exploration of future technologies. OPIM uses Innovate Labs as just one pillar of the Digital Frontiers Initiative, designed to improve workforce training and skills development.
One of the main goals of the Digital Frontiers Initiative is to serve Connecticut businesses through research and workforce development, according to UConn Today. The department joins extracurricular opportunities like Innovate Labs with the School of Business curriculum, where students can take classes in emerging technology and artificial intelligence. As part of UConn’s goals to solve complex problems in business, the Digital Frontiers Imitative allows students to explore different avenues and ideas in a sandbox environment through Innovate Labs.
Innovate Labs also regularly sponsors on-campus events designed to engage students to learn about new technology and how it could be applied to a variety of career paths and lifestyles. Previously, OPIM has sponsored a series of “coffee chats“, which they describe as “an intimate, moderated conversation” between working business professionals and groups of students. Other events have focused on robotics, programming and workshops to teach students skills in new technologies.
Another element of the program is that Innovate Labs is managed in collaboration with several student’s lab specialists, each of whom focus on different technologies and help support teaching and interactive learning with the program.
Students can visit the three Innovate Labs spaces at the School of Business building room 391 in Storrs-Mansfield, at the University Place complex room 310 in Stamford and at the new location in the Business Learning Center room 120 in Hartford.
For more information about Innovate Labs, visit innovatelabs.business.uconn.edu and for UConn’s Digital Frontiers Initiative, visit digitalfrontiers.business.uconn.edu.