Putting the "Center" in IDEA Center
As we enter the 15th year anniversary of the IDEA Engineering Student Center within the Jacobs School of Engineering, we are happy to share that we are putting the "Center" in the IDEA Engineering Student Center!
The IDEA Center will be expanding into the Powell-Focht Bioengineering Hall basement, gaining a small study lounge and classroom space for students to study, Engineering Learning Community sections, and events.
The space will be officially open in Fall 2025!
The results are in!
The IDEA Engineering Student Center is excited to open a brand new study lounge and workshop space, and we asked for your help! Talented student artists submitted their artwork to the IDEA Center to have their work turned into a mural within the new Study Lounge. The winning design will be permanently featured within the Study Lounge, and artist will win a $500 prize.
With over 200 student votes, the winning design has been selected! Congratulations to James Mah! See below for what will be featured within the new space.
“Look Up” - James Mah
I never really knew what engineering was. I always just thought it was a bunch of nerdy people in a lab, secluded from daylight, toiling away on a robot or something with a bunch of wires and tubes dangling off of it. It was a bunch of math and physics that I never understood. This minimal understanding of engineering is, in a way, represented through the robots and futuristic vehicles and whatnot strewn about the mural, but since starting, I realized that engineering is a lot more than just robots and complicated math.
There are all these different kinds of people behind every machine, every vehicle, that you never really see or think about. You buy something from the store or take a plane, and you just think that it was made in some factory driven by the labor of underpaid workers, but behind every big idea, there are engineers doing the complicated math and physics that I don’t get. Engineers aren’t just nerdy math people. They make solutions, and in some cheesy way, that makes everyone an engineer.
This revelation made me rethink the original draft of just showing a bunch of gears or motherboards or whatever, and try to show all the regular people behind every engineering feat. My roommate, an aerospace engineer, made his way into the picture. Waldo is there too. You just have to look. Behind every big idea in the world is just a regular flesh-and-blood human. People in the past always dreamed of the society of tomorrow, and we’re living in it. I think that’s pretty cool.
Questions?
Happy to help! Please reach out to Director of the IDEA Engineering Student Center, Dr. Jackie Duerr