Librarian Danianne Mizzy will lead UNC Libraries’s participation in a national grant to study maker competencies.
UNC Libraries’s Kenan Science Library Makerspace and its partners in the UNC BeAM (Be a Maker) network will participate in a national grant to investigate how academic library makerspaces impact undergraduate student learning.
The project, Maker Competencies and the Undergraduate Curriculum, is funded by a $49,800 National Leadership Grant from The Institute of Museum and Library Services. The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries will lead the grant, which involves four additional libraries with makerspaces.
UTA has developed preliminary competencies to guide makerspace practices. Through the grant, investigators will test the competencies at colleges and universities with different campus sizes, student demographics, educational missions, and makerspace sizes and equipment.
Librarian Danianne Mizzy, head of Kenan Science Information Services, will lead UNC’s participation. UNC professors Mark McCombs (Department of Mathematics) and Jocelyn Glazier (School of Education), doctoral candidate Josh Corbat (School of Education), BeAM program coordinator Anna Engelke and Bryant Hutson of UNC’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment will also take part.
The Makerspace at the Kenan Science Library is available for use by all members of the campus community and is also part of the BeAM network. The Makerspace offers equipment, software, and guidance and instruction for 3D scanning and printing, virtual reality, electronics, and design and modeling.
Mizzy is also involved in developing best practices for maker education as a member of the advisory board for Remake Making: Understanding Adoption and Adaptation of Facilitated Making in Libraries. The investigation is based at the University of Pittsburgh and is funded by the National Science Foundation.
