Located in Northeast Ohio, Hawken School is a co-ed private college preparatory high school serving students from preschool to 12th grade. Hawken’s programming now supports over 8,000 square feet of makerspaces include the Upper School Fab Lab, Media Lab, and Woodshop, and the newly renovated Lower School Innovation Lab and Computational Thinking and Design classroom.

Hawken Lower School

Goldberg Family Innovation Lab

Making at the Lower and Middle Schools

Because play is such an important part of growth and development, “making” projects that involve playing, tinkering, designing and creating begin at a young age. The new Innovation Lab enables our younger students to harness and channel their natural creativity and curiosity as they build confidence in their ability to identify and create solutions to problems.

STEM Discovery Zone

This space will be an enclosed project-based environment for students of all ages to actively engage in hands-on projects and collaborative STEM-based experiences. Teachers can utilize the special features of this zone for science projects; wet-lab experiments; engineering challenges; and focused class discussion, experimentation, and discovery.

Fabrication Zone

The Fabrication Zone will give students access to hand tools, power tools, and workshop equipment to build larger projects. The Fabrication Zone invites kids to safely use the correct tools and materials to construct and build their designs. The space will include a CNC router as well as saws, drills, hammers, sanders and hand tools that you would find in a traditional woodshop.

Innovation Zone

This area of the Innovation Lab will allow students to transfer project ideas to the digital fabrication equipment and create 2D and 3D prototypes. Utilizing 21st century design technology, students will be able to model, print, cut, and assemble using sewing machines, a vinyl cutter, laser cutters, and 3D printers.

Engineering Loft

One feature of the Engineering Loft is the Collaboration Zone, which will be outfitted with innovative technology and flexible furniture to enhance the collaborative project experiences. The other main feature of the loft will be the Robotics Zone, where kids will get hands-on experience building and programming robots of all shapes and sizes. In the loft, students will have access to the electronics station, where they can use soldering irons, programming boards, and electrical components to create electronic circuits and prototypes.

Hawken Upper School

Miller Fab Lab, Media Lab and Workshop

Making at the Upper School

The Sydell & Arnold Miller Fab Lab on the Gates Mills Campus is an open resource to all students and families looking to turn innovative ideas into reality. A variety of workspaces and tools including 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC milling machines, a vinyl cutter, 2D and 3D design software, an electronics bench, microcontrollers, power tools, and traditional hand tools provide the resources for the exploration and implementation of creative ideas while also enhancing collaborative opportunities among teachers in the fields of design, engineering, arts, and science.
FabLab Website: http://fablab.hawken.edu/

Classes taught in the Fab Lab include:

Design Fundamentals – In this hybrid class, students spend the first semester exploring the fundamentals of art and design through a variety of digital machines, mixed media, material exploration, and computer design software. In the second semester students spend time in the visual arts classroom learning how to use fine arts tools and techniques to develop their drawing, painting, sculpting, and printmaking skills. Prototyping and Design - Students are introduced to the digital fabrication equipment and then utilize those tools to generate their own independent project. Each student designs and prototypes a project that aligns with a particular area of interest - product design, furniture design, electrical engineering, robotics, coding or programming.