RoboOrg is a graduate student organization in the Robotics Institute. The purpose of the organization is to allow students control over how to spend student activity funds that are allocated to our department each semester. I have had the opportunity to lead this organization for two years, during which time, I expanded our mission; to strengthen the sense of community in the Robotics Institute.
I have approached the task of community building through designing shared experiences. This is achieved in a variety of ways, but the one effort I would like to highlight here is the renovation of our student lounge space.
The old lounge space was not highly utilized, as there was little room to do anything other than play video games with a small group of friends. The size of the space also did not reflect the growing size of our department.
I worked with our department to increase the amount of space allocated to the student lounge. I talked to a bunch of students and then created this drawing with proposed changes.
Here are a few pictures of the new space with many of the changes I suggested (it's so big it's hard to get in one frame!)
However, the structural changes to the lounge were just part of the plan. The challenge remains, how can we get students to actually use the space?
One consequence of stress-culture is that students hesitate to be seen 'taking a break'. However, many of them are more comfortable doing so if the break produces a tangible deliverable. My solution is a modest, student-run snack and coffee service, free to anyone in the RI while they are using the lounge space. I will spare the details about our coffee setup, but the good part is that it is inexpensive infrastructure that students have become interested in maintaining themselves. We even had students post guides on how to brew the perfect cup of pourover coffee!
Utilization of the lounge has skyrocketed, and many people use the lounge in different ways. There are tables for group/individual work. There is a private meeting room for 4-6 people. The more quiet workspaces are separated by sliding doors to an area that is designed more for breaks than work. Students can play a variety of tabletop games, or play video games in a closed room that blocks noise from the adjacent workspaces. Lastly, students have really taken charge in maintaining the kitchen space. What was originally coffee and popcorn has expanded to include a variety of snacks and teas.
Now, 'taking breaks' is incentivized at the same location, so students run into others from labs scattered across campus. This lets students connect with people whom they would normally not see on a day-to-day basis. At a high-level, what I see happening is that students also observe others taking breaks or time to brew a cup of coffee, and this eliminates the stigma of using the lounge space.
CMU's Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) took notice, and I recently won the first-ever Departmental Appreciation Award for my efforts related to RoboOrg. My work in making the student lounge space a highly utilized community hub was highlighted.