This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Six Technology Clinic students will soon make a mid-year presentation to clients on their proposals for renovation and use of an abandoned 300,000-square-foot building in northeastern Pennsylvania that has served as a locomotive factory, railroad maintenance facility, and steel mill.
The group is working on behalf of the Rotary Club and borough of Weatherly, Pa., to analyze potential use of the structure and its auxiliary buildings and create a report and graphic presentation that will be used to apply for federal and state funding and for potential commercial investors.
It is a project of great importance for the town of 2,600, which has seen its job base shrink from 3,000 to 150 since 1989.
Technology Clinic is a hands-on course founded in 1986 that brings together students from different majors for two semesters to solve the real-world problems of a business, non-profit organization, or government body. The diverse disciplines represented in the class enables it to apply different perspectives and arrive at more comprehensive and creative solutions. The group’s research addresses the social, technological, and economic issues involved with the client’s problem.
Students in the course are biology major Jillian Carinci ’08 (Wilmington, Del.);Trustee Scholar Molly McDonald ’06, a double major in English and history; mechanical engineering majorVarun Mehta ’06; Chris Rosa ’07(West Islip, N.Y.), , a double major in government & law and economics & business; Trustee Scholar Lori Weaver ’06 (White Haven, Pa.), a double major in history and government & law; and Sandamali Wijeratne ’06 (Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka), a double major in international affairs and English. Guiding the students as project facilitators are Technology Clinic program director Dan Bauer, professor of anthropology and sociology, and architect Will Dohe.
The students have conducted multiple visits to Weatherly for site work and to meet with the borough manager and Rotary Board. They toured neighboring towns to gain a broad context of the social, economic, and historical role the building played in the region.
For Rosa, the course is an exciting new experience, and daunting.
“[Students] work with partners in class, but this is my first time working on a project of this scale. There are so many aspects to it. It’s a multi-million dollar project. It’s mind-numbing sometimes when you come home from meetings and say to yourself “wow, there’s just so much to do,’” he says.
Bauer divides the class into teams. One group is analyzing the social aspects of the town, reporting on various demographic factors, including age breakdown, types of jobs held by the residents, whether they were born in or moved to Weatherly, household income, and commercial use.
Another team is examining the integrity of the structure, including the walls, trusses, and roof, and looking at future-use considerations.
Rosa is working with Dohe on the architectural aspects and examining the internal and external vistas the site offers, “looking at the whole site and views of it from inside and outside. We have to understand the layout of the site and the [accompanying] buildings, the spatial relations inside, and look at needs for parking and access to the site,” he explains.
He has taken many photographs of the site and mapped it using computer software. He joins other class members in studying architecture and large-scale site design reference books and using on-line resources. One student attended a three-day international seminar on re-use of public spaces.
A number of uses are being considered, reports Bauer, including restoration of the railroad aspect of the building, a library, an area for youth activities and local clubs, and a theater. To tap into the considerable state money available, the students have to tailor their ideas to suit grant requirements.
“Yet [we can’t be] so focused that we just go after the grant and don’t also attract other potential investors,” says Bauer. “It’s one thing to get a building looking like a library or a museum or business incubator space; it’s another thing to make it sustainable through time.”
Figuring out the potential uses of the building within the parameters of location, population, and economy is precisely the broad-based challenge Bauer wants to present in Technology Clinic, and why the course is composed of students from across the academic spectrum.
“Students from different majors have different views and bring different perspectives,” he says. “If everybody is seeing something different, we’re more likely to bring in all the components that are useful for a good solution than if everybody is looking at the problem from a civil engineering standpoint, or everybody is looking as a social scientist. The fact that people see the problem in such diverse terms may make it so that you come up with a solution that is qualitatively new, or at least one that attends to a wider variety of needs and constituencies.”
Bauer wants to instill in his students an appreciation for looking at issues from a wider range of views.
“One impression that students often have is that the discipline they have been trained in has a kind of monopoly on truth and is the right way to think, and that those who think in other ways are somehow misguided or sloppy thinkers. So I hope they’ll get a respect for what other people are learning and doing,” he says. “I hope they learn that they can think creatively in a field they weren’t trained in.”
“Another thing is that when students get out in the real world, they have to work with people who don’t necessarily think the way they were trained. So they will have better skills in dealing with people,’ Bauer adds.
Rosa sees the broad lessons of the course.
“When working on problems in class, there usually is an answer you are heading toward. But in doing this project, there isn’t always a single answer – it’s not ‘we have this building and this is what needs to be done with it.’ There are so many intricacies and complexities in a real-world problem like this,” he says.
“Professor Bauer doesn’t come in and say ‘this is what I need you to do.’ He opens it up for discussion about what has to be done. [This course] is a great learning experience in how things get done, how you group together, how you do things individually, how you communicate. You can feel how the whole group works together; it’s very dynamic,” says Rosa.
Selection for Tech Clinic is very competitive. Students must be recommended by faculty or administration. Bauer and a co-facilitator interview 15-30 students for the half-dozen slots and put together a class comprised of students from the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and engineering.
While other schools have real-world, problem-solving classes, Lafayette’s course emphasizes the interdisciplinary aspect.
“This fits well with the sort of school we are,” says Bauer.
Today, another Technology Clinic class is giving a presentation on the walking DVD tour it developed to make the history of area technology come alive at Hugh Moore Park in Easton through images, graphics, narrative, and sound.
Recommendations from a Technology Clinic that concluded last spring are at the heart of a plan to improve the Easton and Phillipsburg riverfront area and invigorate the business climate using more than $6 million in grants from the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
Other recent Technology Clinic projects have resulted in recommendations for improving traffic on Cattell Street and ideas for developing the North 3rd Street corridor at the foot of College Hill in Easton, an automobile tour on CD to boost tourism and local awareness of historical assets in Nazareth and its surrounding rural municipalities, a self-guided tour and other enhancements at Bachmann Publick House in downtown Easton, and improvements in the experiences of patients at the offices of doctors within Lehigh Valley Hospital Physicians Group.
Other projects in recent years have included a report on creating environmentally friendly hotels, which the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection posted on its web site; an interactive web site for the National Canal Museum in downtown Easton; a drunk-driving simulator at Easton’s Weller Center; recommendations for proposed uses of Bachmann Publick House; suggestions to improve fundraising for ProJeCt for People (formerly ProJeCt of Easton); recommendations on a learning center at the National Canal Museum; and a proposal for development in the Slate Belt.
Older projects have included: