National gathering brings academic shop professionals to campus to explore safety, student access and shop operations

Eric Pulse left the first Student Shop Managers Conference in 2015 with Cal Poly already in mind as a future host. Eleven years later, he had his chance.

About 120 people who oversee university machine shops, makerspaces and other student fabrication spaces traveled from across the country to San Luis Obispo July 7-9 to exchange ideas about safety, training and student access.

“We have such a wide breadth of things we do,” said Pulse, manager of CENG Fabrication & Design Shops. “I wanted to embrace the widest span of Learn by Doing and share that with everyone else.”

The campus itself became part of the program.

Attendees toured 14 sites, including College of Engineering facilities such as the Hangar and Mustang Makerspace. Stops ranged from agriculture and architecture shops to Rose Float and Cal Poly’s winemaking facility.

The tours also gave Pulse a chance to highlight how Cal Poly approaches student access.

At some universities, he said, students must complete a semesterlong course before they can use a shop or may not enter one until they begin a senior project. Cal Poly has increasingly lowered those barriers, allowing students to use fabrication spaces for projects beyond assigned coursework.  

“We don’t turn anyone away,” Pulse said. “If you want to build a bookshelf, go for it.”

The way Cal Poly staffs its shops drew interest as well. A conference panel moderated by Pulse featured student shop technicians describing how they help prepare their peers to work safely.

Pulse said visitors were particularly interested in that model and in how Cal Poly manages the volume of students using its spaces.

Conference sessions explored challenges common to academic shops. Presentations addressed machine shop safety and making woodshops and makerspaces more accessible, while other discussions looked at managing large groups of students and communicating the value of those environments. Keynote speaker Alex McNamara, founder of Built Pretty and a construction educator, spoke on “Safety Isn’t Rules, It’s Culture.”

Safety has guided the conference from the start. The idea took shape at Duke in 2014, after Duke student shop manager Steven Earp was moved by the death of a student in a university machine shop and began building a national network for people responsible for student shop safety.

That inaugural gathering drew about 70 attendees, united by a desire to share practices that could help prevent future injuries and fatalities. In 2017, the Student Shop Managers Consortium formed to build a broader community for academic shop professionals.

Sharing those ideas remained central to this year’s gathering. More than showcasing what Cal Poly does, Pulse hoped the conference would expand what visitors imagined for their own shops.

“I wanted to show anything’s possible,” he said.

Support Cal Poly student shop technicians by giving to the Student Tech Fund.