Growing Fab Lab Network Brings the High-Tech, Hands-On STEM Education Out to Rural K-12 Students
Traveling south about an hour from downtown Pittsburgh along Pennsylvania Route 43, visitors roll into Coal Center, home to Intermediate Unit 1, a regional education service agency. Intermediate Unit 1 also serves as home to a Fab Lab — a highly technical maker space packed with the latest machines and programs to spur hands-on STEM learning.
As Fab Labs branch out across the nation, thanks in part to a $10 million, three-year push by Chevron to locate 10 labs where they can serve a diverse population of school-age children, rural communities that otherwise wouldn’t have access to such sophisticated technical equipment have reaped the benefits for their students.
Since 2014, rural Fab Labs outside Pittsburgh and Odessa, Texas, and six other more-urban locations have given 12,000 students the opportunity to engage in hands-on STEM-styled experiments, encouraging them to try new things — and try them over and over. …