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Wheaton is becoming a leader in integrating technology throughout academic and co-curricular life. From our new state-of-art classrooms and laboratories to our community members accessing Wi-Fi on the Dimple, Wheaton is constantly looking into new ways to integrate technology on campus. Let's not forget to mention the recently added makerspaces! You can find our students in one of the college's creative spaces building objects of all types and experimenting with new technologies. With an investment in Wheaton's technology and teaching tools, you help support the spirit of inquiry and experimentation that is central to the innovative learning that permeates the Wheaton campus.
The InterMedia Arts Group Innovation Network (IMAGINE) features 10 physical spaces throughout campus where students, faculty, and staff can experiment with art, technology, and making. The IMAGINE project provides opportunities for integrating technology into the arts at Wheaton through a network of high-tech and traditional creative hubs across campus and opportunities for student-faculty collaboration. You may be familiar with a few of our creative spaces; the Kresge Experimental Theatre, Sculpture Studio, Graphic Design Lab, Ellison Dance Studio, or the ECCS radio station and recording studio. However, there are three new creative spaces that help Wheaton stand out as a leader in technology for liberal art colleges:
Humanities, Arts, and Technology Creative Hub (HATCH): Located in Meneely, this creative space houses virtual and augmented reality devices, Oculus Rift WR gear and Tobii eye-tracking technology, as well as two 85-inch LED monitors.
LAB 213: Located in two rooms of the original Science Center, this space is known as Wheaton's central makerspace. It houses a laser cutter and engravers, two 3-D printers, a 3-D scanner, a scanning design computer, and more. An adjacent machine shop features additional equipment that is frequently used.
FiberSpace: Located in Watson Fine Arts, this space is equipped with a variety of tools for textile work. The newest piece of maker equipment is a 30-inch programmable Jacquard loom capable of analog weaving custom textiles from digital inputs.
Located in Mars Center for Science and Technology, the Imaging Center for Undergraduate Collaboration (ICUC, or “I see, you see”) is Wheaton College’s state-of-the-art facility where students and faculty capture and analyze digital images of diverse subjects–from single cells to whole star systems! The ICUC has 14 imaging stations that include cameras and microscopes linked to iMacs loaded with the latest imaging software and networked telescope, printers, scanners, servers, and drones. The purpose of all this is to support the innovative teaching and research with digital imaging technology.
The summer of 2020 marks the 13th summer of working with undergraduates to build tools to help scholars explore their digitized texts. Project leads Professor Michael Drout, Professor Scott Kleinman, and Professor Mark LeBlanc are blending start-up and research cultures to build and apply tools for introductory explorations of one's favorite collection of texts. As part of its research program, the Lexomics group develops the Lexos text analysis tool, which implements aspects of their research methods. The tools are simple enough to be used easily by the casual student but powerful enough for the advanced professor to use in creating new knowledge and insight.
