RIDE Center- Faculty Resources

The Research, Innovation, Design & Entrepreneurial (RIDE) Center is pleased to offer class orientations and visits to boost student and faculty champion involvement. Please contact us in advance of the date you would like to have your class visit, and we will do our best to accommodate. Please limit class visits to 2 hours.

• There are no storage closets available for student or faculty use. There are shared cubbies where students can set their backpacks/jackets/other personal belongings near the main entrance, and also small portable storage lockers with keys. To use one of these lockers, please ask a RIDE Center staff member for one of the keys.  

• The RIDE Center has a collection of 10 iPads and 5 Desktop Mac computers for student and faculty use. Please make sure your students have access to their campus accounts in order to use these.  

• The RIDE Center has 2 monitors in the Common Area that can be used for faculty or student presentations. The monitors can display two separate presentations at once, or mirror one another. Please be sure to have a backup USB of desired presentations to use on the designated laptop used for presenting, or make sure all presentations are uploaded to a format accessible with student/faculty log in information (i.e. OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.) 

1. Entering the RIDE Center  

• When students arrive with you to the RIDE Center for a class, please have a “sign in” sheet ready for them to check in. We will take a copy of the sheet once the class session ends. 

• Every student who attends a class session or workshop must complete a RIDE Center Waiver. You can either print these waivers yourself and turn them in when you and your class arrive, or students can fill out a copy when they arrive for the class session or workshop. Students do not need to fill out a second waiver to have on file if they have already done so on their own, or for another class or workshop.  

• Please ensure that all of your students place their belongings in either in a cubby or under their chairs, as to not cause any obstructions for other students working in the RIDE Center.  

2. Keeping the RIDE Center Clean  

• Please help to ensure that the Common Area and the Makerspace stay clean by encouraging all of your students to clean up after themselves. When they leave, the space should look exactly as it did when they arrived.  

• Students who have in-progress work or work that hasn’t finished yet on a machine/has to set and/or dry over time, please have them label their work and discuss with a RIDE Center staff member about where they can store it/when they can pick it up. Please label any work with student names, class (if necessary), A#, date created, and expected date of completion.  

• Please remind students that any work left unattended or outside of a specified storage space without notifying a RIDE Center employee may be thrown away or moved.  

• The RIDE Center is not responsible for damaged work. 

3. Materials  

• Your department budget should cover the costs of material for your classes/workshops/student projects whenever possible. It is not in the RIDE Center budget to cover projects from all academic courses or workshops.  

• Generally, the RIDE Center will not charge for equipment usage, but we ask that you and your students fill out the Equipment Logs attached to each machine to allow us to track usage and understand what projects are being worked on. If you or your department is utilizing a specific machine or machines to a substantial degree, we do ask that heavy users of these expensive tools contribute from their own department to help replace filters, ink, materials, etc.  

• The RIDE Center will supply some standard materials that students or faculty may purchase from us is needed. If there are specific materials your class or department would like available in the space, please email RIDE Center Executive Diretor Dr. Lamis Jarvinen ljarvinen@westfield.ma.edu with your requests and we will try to accommodate as best we can.  

4. Equipment  

• Please advise students that they will not be able to utilize specific equipment until they have completed a skills badge training with a RIDE Center staff member or Student Ambassador.  

Some rough guidelines for your students to consider when booking: 

Engraving 

3x3 inch engraving- 3-5 minutes 

15x15 inch engraving- up to 20 minutes  

Full 32x20 inch engraving- anywhere from 1.5-3 hours  

Full 40x28 inch engraving- anywhere from 2.5-4 hours  

Laser cutter 

Paper- >1-5 minutes  

Chipboard- 2-25 minutes (depending on size)  

Acrylic/plexi- 10-45 minutes (depending on size)  

Plywood ¼- 10-45 minutes (depending on size)  

3D Printers  

On average, overnight prints- 12-20 hours  

***FAILS DO HAPPEN, advise your students NOT to wait until last minute! 

We welcome faculty to schedule class visits or workshops throughout the semester. If you are interested in visiting please contact Dr. Lamis Jarvinen ljarvinen@westfield.ma.edu.

Yes, and we encourage our faculty to introduce their students to prototyping in a variety of different ways. Please just notify a RIDE Center staff member in advance of the assignment, so that we can ensure all your students have access to the tools they need to meet the deadline. If your entire class is required to use the space for a specific project, please set up an orientation with us (via email) so we can introduce your students to the necessary tools in a manner tailored to their specific needs. If you are simply encouraging students to utilize the space but it is not mandatory,  do still let us know and we can help them get started/answer any questions.

Our staff and Student Ambassadors are happy to discuss how the RIDE Center and its resources can help you enhance the classroom experience for your students. However, we are not here to do the prototyping for you, but we can help you narrow the scope of your ideas and decide how to bring them to life! Consider allowing a student to complete the independent project themselves, and we will be happy to mentor them through the prototyping process.  

If any object or prototype you are considering would heighten the accessibility of your course to more WSU students, our staff would be willing to help you make it under those circumstances if we are able. If you have any questions, simply ask a staff member.  

Whenever possible, we encourage WSU Departments to cover their own costs in the RIDE Center. Generally, we do not charge for equipment usage, but if we see in the equipment logs that one of your courses is utilizing a specific machine for substantial amounts of time and consuming a large quantity of supplies, we would very much appreciate any contributions your department would allow (i.e. filters, ink, etc.)