In May 2019, Oberlin College and Lorain County Community College (LCCC) created the 4D Liberal Arts Initiative with the support of a Multi-Institutional Innovation Grant from Bringing Theory to Practice. The initiative brought together LCCC’s Campana Center for Ideation and Invention and Oberlin’s Center for Convergence (StudiOC). Beginning with a faculty summer institute, it launched a series of collaborative projects that bridged the Campana Center’s Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory) with StudiOC’s emphasis on design thinking in the liberal arts.
Writing students from LCCC, for instance, studied printing technologies, typeface, and print-making in StudiOC and Oberlin’s library collections. An Oberlin choreography class and a digital design course from LCCC investigated the use of the Fab Lab’s VR (virtual reality) technology in dance. (Faculty went on to present their research at the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces at Brown University in early March, 2020.)
The faculty partners aim to expand the 4D Liberal Arts initiative beyond its pilot phase and to collaborate on projects that connect students and curricula from their institutions, as well as exploring the integration of technology, the “maker movement,” and liberal learning.
If you are interested in learning more about the 4D Liberal Arts Initiative, please visit these additional resources: