For Faculty & Staff

Do you want to integrate creative methods in your classroom and research? Design and hands-on making can be valuable to academic pursuits in all disciplines. We’re here to partner with faculty to support learning goals through the collaborative opportunities listed below.

Please email Alix Gerber at agerber@smith.edu or make an appointment to discuss your ideas and brainstorm ways of working together.

2026–27

This year, the Design Thinking Initiative is trying some new things, and we want to invite you to join in! In particular, we want to let you know about three exciting opportunities:

Have you been looking for an opportunity to work on your own project at the DTI? Submit a proposal to join a fully funded two-week studio residency with exclusive access to all tools, materials, and capacities of our makerspace to advance an existing project, experiment with materials or techniques, or build out a new idea. Residents will have the support of fellow residents, DTI staff, and visiting maker-in-residence Kayla Powers.

  • Info session: October 2 from 12:15–1:05 p.m. in Capen Annex
  • Applications due: November 2
  • Residency: January 11–22

This five-session series invites all members of the Smith community to gain foundational approaches to design and making, experience the difficulty and aliveness of these practices firsthand, and leave with something concrete to try in your own domain. It is open to faculty, staff, and students, and you can join for just one workshop or many.

Fridays from 1:20 to 2:35 p.m in Capen Annex

  • September 11: What do we mean by “designing”?
  • October 2: Framing a design brief: Finding your way into the making
  • October 9: What to make? Generating and choosing ideas
  • October 23: Getting unstuck by making: Kites!
  • November 6: Prototyping: Quick ways to test ideas

We are exploring ideas of gathering, relating, and carrying. We invite faculty, students, and staff, as individuals or teams, to take on this theme over the course of the academic year by making objects, interventions, research, or any other form you conceive. Works and the processes of making them could be exhibited in April.

Do you have a burning desire to tell untold stories? Have you been dreaming up a creative intervention that flips a script? Are you curious to explore a material process without knowing exactly where it will lead?

Info session lunch: September 30 from 12:15 to 1:05 p.m. in Capen Annex

Sending Your Students to the DTI

You are welcome to share DTI with your students as a resource to support any creative project you assign. At our makerspace in Capen Annex (25A Henshaw Ave), students can find materials and tools to support their creative work. They can also get help from the students who work at DTI as studio design partners. The space is open every day during the semester, including evenings and weekends. Take a look at the Studio Use & Hours page for our current open hours. You may want to share this 5-minute video with students as an introduction to the makerspace.

Reach out and let us know if you are directing your students to the DTI—we love to know our resources are useful to you!

Forms of Course Support

Want to bring your class to a creative space? Reserve our flexible design thinking classroom. We offer:

  • Movable and adjustable height tables
  • Whiteboards
  • Brainstorming materials such as sticky notes and markers
  • Access to many lo-fi-making supplies

Limit of two meetings per course in the classroom, per semester, to ensure that the space is generally available for making. Please note, the room functions best with a maximum of 16 students.

Invite us into your class to facilitate hands-on creative workshops that explore your curriculum through design and making.

We can practice:

  • Iteration and prototyping– making ideas real in quick, scrappy ways to test and inform future versions
  • Techniques for mapping, modeling, or visualizing concepts
  • Designing experiences and the touchpoints that make them real
  • Investigating people’s needs and dreams through reflection, observation, and co‑creation
  • Making artifacts from future and alternative worlds to provoke discussion and debate

We can facilitate workshops in your classroom or invite your class into our space at Capen Annex (maximum of 16 students). With advance planning, we can invite visiting artists and designers from off-campus to connect with your class’s learning goals.

We’re eager to explore how design and making can help us open up questions, explore hypotheses, and support sense making in Smith faculty research. Please email Alix Gerber (agerber@smith.edu) to discuss how you could investigate your research interests through design and making.