Try @ TXST

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, y'all. My name is Giselle and I'm the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University. You're listening to Try at Texas State, and today's episode is all about Alkek One.
(singing).
Alkek Library is seven stories tall, filled with resources, study nooks, books and computers for Texas State students to use. When I was a student, I'd frequently visit the fifth and sixth floors for a quiet escape to study for the exams, but in the past couple of years, the first floor of the library has completely transformed and turned into a one-stop shop for tech and information. Alkek One is one of a kind, no pun intended. From 3D printing and embroidery to laser cutters and virtual reality, they have everything you can imagine.
OK. Let's get right into it. Can you guys describe to me what Alkek One is like I've never even stepped foot there?

Andrew Rechnitz:
Alkek One, the concept for it came because I'd done a postdoctoral fellowship in digital scholarship up at Southwestern University. I'm Andrew Rechnitz. I'm the director of Systems and Technology Strategies in the library. Oversee the library systems obviously, and then Alkek One spaces. There, I had created little versions of what you now see in Alkek One. There was a one-button video and audio recording studio. We had a VR lab. We had a makerspace with one 3D printer. I was hired to be the assistant director of the Learning Commons at Texas State because the library was moving from a collection based focus to a learning commons model. They were undertaking this big capital renovation project. The library had done focus groups with a huge number of faculty and staff and put out a call for things they'd want to see in the library as part of this renovation.
And I started noticing as I was combing through all the proposals and the focus group notes that really the technology areas that they were looking at were things I'd already done but that weren't co-located. The idea for Alkek One was that we would co-locate all of these technology spaces in one area so that they could become an ecosystem. But it was more than just the spaces themselves. The ecosystem, it's the lifeblood because the people would be using the spaces and not just one at a time, but maybe moving from one space to another. So you might create something in the digital design space and then move over to the Makerspace and print it. The idea was that we would give people an introduction to the way that technology spaces could be synergistic, that they could cooperate, and that there were incidental or chance things that could happen that might not otherwise if you found these things on different floors or in different departments.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome. Tyler, I'm going to talk to you for a second. Tell me one more time what year you are.

Tyler Davis:
I just started my junior year at Texas-

Giselle Kowalski:
Your junior year. OK. As a junior, when did you find out about Alkek One and what was that like for you?

Tyler Davis:
The first time I actually ever heard of Alkek One, I was on my tour before I came in as a freshman. My name's Tyler Davis. I'm a junior here at Texas State in electrical engineering. I work in the Makerspace at Alkek Library on the first floor. And it was on a Sunday, I guess during the summer and the library was closed, but the tour guide was like, "Yeah, they have all kinds of cool stuff down on the first floor. They have a water jet." And I've been building stuff and been in engineering a long time and so I knew what a water jet was and when they said it, I was like, "There's no way. They must be mistaken. There's no water jet on the first floor of the library. It's crazy." And so I remembered that all the way until the first day I moved into my dorm and I got all my stuff in my dorm and I immediately went to the library to go check out where is this elusive water jet. And that's where I found the whole floor of Alkek One and all the technology it has to offer.

Giselle Kowalski:
Dang. Yeah. So you were like, let's see if this is legit. Can y'all walk me through the spaces at Alkek One? Because you guys have mentioned them a little bit, but for those that don't really know what the space is like or how you even move through it, what are those spaces?

Andrew Rechnitz:
You walk in the first floor entrance and the first thing you encounter is the student gallery. We hold a competition annually and a call will be going out pretty soon for the next round for student creators who have either a fully fledged, totally designed project or who just have an idea for a project. We have an evaluation panel basically that has faculty, it has library staff, it has industry experts. We've had people from Adobe and Autodesk serve on it. They evaluate the projects and then they work with people like our Makerspace coordinator or the head of our emerging technologies or GIS specialists to make projects. We provide all the materials for free. They design these things. And actually Tyler has one up right now. Do you want to talk about that one a little bit?

Tyler Davis:
Yeah. I submitted my proposal pretty much this time last year, maybe in October. I was at a concert last year and I was laying in bed trying to think of what I wanted to do for my next project. And I was like, "I've been building a lot of speakers lately." And I thought it'd be cool to make an instrument now. And I was at that concert, I was like, "oh, a guitar." And so I started researching electric guitars and trying to understand how they worked, what could I do to make one, do I have the resources in the library. And four or five months go by, and I got it really far along and actually Andrew saw the progress I'd made and he was like, "You should submit this for the art gallery. This should be up." And so I did. I submitted it and then over the next two or three months before the art gallery went up, I was able to get it finished and it's been hanging up since the beginning of the year.

Giselle Kowalski:
Those guitars are super cool and for those that haven't seen it, it's four or five and it's from the first prototype that you made all the way up until the most recent one, if I'm correct.

Tyler Davis:
Right. It starts out with just a complete and utter failure. Didn't even get it out of the mold. And then it slowly progressed and got better and I don't know, I made maybe 12 or 13. So there's several that-

Giselle Kowalski:
Didn't make the cut.

Tyler Davis:
Editions between there. Ran out of wall space, but yeah, it goes through the whole process. Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK. So Tyler, how did you even make it? What did that even look like?

Tyler Davis:
Well, first thing I need to do is have a version of it on a computer. I needed some solid model. I of course had a little bit of 3D modeling experience, but not enough. And so I just started teaching myself. I looked on YouTube, I looked on Autodesk's website, found tutorials, and I learned how to design it from scratch myself. And so I designed the whole guitar body in that and then it came down to actually machining it so I just kept gluing up scrap pieces of wood together and throwing it at the machine and having it cut out.

Giselle Kowalski:
Which machine?

Tyler Davis:
I use a three axis CNC mill. So it's basically a robot that can cut in any direction.

Giselle Kowalski:
And that's in the Makerspace, right?

Tyler Davis:
That's in the Makerspace.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK. Cool.

Tyler Davis:
Everything that I needed to make the guitar was all in the Makerspace.

Giselle Kowalski:
Oh, that's super cool. And watching that progress also, I felt like I was in a museum looking at ... In the gallery what you've made, it's very impressive. I hope you're proud of yourself for that.

Tyler Davis:
Thank you.

Giselle Kowalski:
I wanted to talk a little bit about micro-credentialing because we haven't said anything about that, but whenever I was there visiting with y'all and also Kelly Damphousse, our president, he was there with us and we talked a lot about micro-credentialing. And Tyler, you have your own micro-credentialing program, correct?

Tyler Davis:
I do. And I'm going to teach a workshop on how to machine the things that I have made, so the guitars and things. I'm going to teach people how to come up with that.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's super sick. OK. So what is micro-credentialing?

Andrew Rechnitz:
Well, there are a lot of different versions of it. There are for-credit micro-credentials people have. There are non-credit micro-credentials, co-curricular ones. Ours are non-credit. We established a partnership with the LBJ STEM Institute on campus, and they have a grant from NASA. And so the micro-credentials, when you earn one from us, it's actually issued by NASA. They're the underwriter for them. But basically they're about, I'd say like six to eight hours a piece. So that's usually about three to four sessions, depending on the micro-credential. These are more dedicated. Once you're done with this, you understand a process that you can then take forward and do other things. So we have right now 14 different micro-credentials. We've issued 200 over the last year. Students, faculty, and staff. Even my 10-year-old son did two of them last summer when we were piloting them. So they really truly are for people with little to no experience all the way up to you're a intermediate expert, and you just want to get a little more insight from somebody who does this every day for their work and their lives.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's awesome. And also that would look amazing on a resume.

Andrew Rechnitz:
Yep.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's incredible.

Andrew Rechnitz:
They can all be ported directly to LinkedIn or we issue the badges through Badger, so they're portable everywhere and last forever.

Giselle Kowalski:
This is free for everyone, right? There's no cost?

Andrew Rechnitz:
That's correct. Yeah. You can go to the reservation signup page and sign up for any one you want. Yeah. The only thing that we honestly charge for and it's really just to keep operations going, are materials in the Makerspace, and we do those completely at cost. And actually they're even a little cheaper probably than you could get them because obviously we're a tax exempt organization and we're not profiting off of any of this. So it's probably your best bang for your buck.

Giselle Kowalski:
This is a question for both of y'all. What projects have you seen that students, faculty, and staff have made that have just completely blown your minds?

Tyler Davis:
We have a Bobcat Aerospace team on campus, and they've been working in the makerspace lately, and that has been really cool watching them design and build these rockets. And then even something simple like somebody in the makerspace is using the CNC machine, the same one I used for the guitars, to make 3D topographical maps. And I think that's just really cool that they had this idea to make something really simple, but you couldn't get anywhere else. You can't get a topographical map of your favorite place or where you were born anywhere else, but you can make it relatively easily and anything you don't know, you can ask for help and there's somebody there that can help.

Andrew Rechnitz:
Everything you see down there, and what comes out of there ... I mean, we have a top 20 Spotify podcast that's being recorded down in those studios. There are 3D pyramids on the wall in the digital design space with projective AR that uses Unity to project and beats to music. That was completely created by students who are working with our head of the Immersion Studio. Everything you see on that big globe down there, it's called the PufferTouch, those were all things created by students. Either they are student employees or students who had an idea for something they wanted to put on there. So everything you look at down there, everything you can see, everything in the student gallery every year, that's all generated by the students here. And that's what we really love about Alkek One is that this is a space for the community.

Giselle Kowalski:
Do you guys have any favorite memories in Alkek One, whether it be making something or just a conversation you had with anybody?

Tyler Davis:
For me, I think it's just because I work at the front desk in the Makerspace, I get to talk to everybody who comes in and we have a bunch of regulars. People come in every day, a couple times a week, even just the same time each week. And just getting to build relationships with these people and ask them, "Hey, how was that thing you mentioned last week? How was that concert you said you were going to go to?" Or just the relationships that I've built getting to be in there has been invaluable.

Andrew Rechnitz:
Really Alkek One, the last thing we should do is foreground the technology there. That's what everybody sees, and that's part of the draw, but it's all about the people. I mean, it's the users, it's the instructors, it's the administrators and the staff that keep it running. It's the student employees who are truly the lifeblood of that organization. There are times when there are no full-time staff there on weekends, and it is really just the student employees making that whole place hum.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah. I will say that whenever you walk into Alkek One, it feels very warm for something that's very ... It's a hard to understand technology. Everything that you guys have, it's kind of daunting, but you guys make it so accessible and so easy to just jump right in. So I never feel out of place there. Even though I've been there, I've never actually dealt with any of the tools and every single time I'm there, I feel like I can and I can ask for help. Which is a big deal. It's like gymtimidation. I feel like that whenever I'm around technology that's as impressive as what you have. And so whenever I go there, all the students are super willing to help and everyone knows so much, but they don't make you feel silly or dumb, which is invaluable.

Tyler Davis:
Yeah, absolutely.

Giselle Kowalski:
My last question for both of y'all is how can students benefit from visiting and just taking advantage of Alkek One as a whole?

Tyler Davis:
I've met people who know a lot of things that I don't know. The guitars were my project and I've worked on them for over a year now, but it would not have ever happened without so many of the people that come into the space every day. My boss, the Makerspace coordinator, it took a lot of help. And so getting these connections with everybody is incredible. All these skills that I've gained, working with the machines, working with tools, working with people, that's all going to carry on long after I graduate. I have no idea what I'm going to do as a career, but I know whatever it is, the skills and the knowledge and the relationships that I've gained from Alkek One will be a great driver in getting me there.

Giselle Kowalski:
Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on.

Andrew Rechnitz:
Thanks so much, Giselle.

Tyler Davis:
Thank you.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome.
Thank you so much to Tyler and Andrew for sharing all your experiences and your love of Alkek One with me. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Try at Texas State Podcast. Make sure to tune in next time to learn more about something else you can try on campus at Texas State. And also remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube @TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the hosts and guests, not of Texas State University. Again, I'm your host, Giselle Kowalski, and I'll see y'all next time. Bye y'all.
(singing).
Sweet. So can you both please introduce yourselves and what you do here at Texas State?

Tyler Davis:
My name's Tyler Davis. I'm a junior here at Texas State in electrical engineering. I work in the Makerspace at Alkek Library on the first floor, and that's pretty much all. That's all about me.

Andrew Rechnitz:
I'm Andrew Rechnitz. I'm the director of Systems and Technology Strategies in the library. Oversee the library systems, obviously, and then Alkek One spaces.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome. And Andrew, are you a Texas State alum?

Andrew Rechnitz:
I am not.

Giselle Kowalski:
Oh, OK. Where did you go to college?

Andrew Rechnitz:
Hook 'em.

Giselle Kowalski:
Hook 'em?

Andrew Rechnitz:
Well, all right. So my undergrad was at Boston College and then my master's from Colorado State, and then I did my PhD at UT.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK. Got it. I don't know why I thought you were a Bobcat, but you're still a Bobcat to me.

Andrew Rechnitz:
Thank you. I appreciate that.