3D Printing for Middle School Outreach: A Collaboration Between the Science Library and the Society of Women Engineers

3D printing is rapidly becoming an essential skill for engineering students as reliable printers become affordable for educational use. Engineering students are trained to use common CAD design software but, through 3D printing, students can immediately evaluate the validity of their design and iterate as appropriate to reach the desired functionality. To meet this need, the University of Florida Marston Science Library (MSL) opened a public 3D print lab in April 2014. The engineering librarians were approached by the University of Florida (UF) student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) to collaborate in their spring 2015 outreach to middle school students. This annual outreach initiative introduces budding scientists to engineering through tours of campus labs, exposure to new technologies, and engaging workshops. The UF SWE chapter aims to introduce these crucial engineering technologies at a young age (especially to girls), and spark interest in these areas to help them consider engineering as a possible career path. The library workshops introduced students to the entire 3D design cycle from modeling to production, and concluded by printing a model that they designed. The librarians and SWE representatives co-taught a basic design program, Tinkercad, along with providing design advice and a primer about 3D printing technology. The workshop was based upon general workshops that the library provides to the UF community but was targeted at immediate success for a middle school audience. The learning objectives for the students were to leave the workshop familiar with 3D design and the knowhow to create and evaluate a 3D model that is suitable for printing. The initial workshop included male and female students and the second (offered in conjunction with UF SWE’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day) was exclusively female. The mission of this UF SWE outreach was to target improving upon girls’ spatial visualization skills, an area in which girls often fall behind, but is crucial for many engineering fields. An additional goal was that these students continue to refine and expand their modeling expertise through continued access to the UF library 3D printers. This paper provides a brief background of MSL’s 3D printing service and the libraries collaboration with student organizations; tips on engagement of different audiences with this new service; and the real-world use case of middle school outreach.