From learner to leader: Honing mechanical engineering skills through hands-on work in Boyd Lab

Colin Livesay’s first experience in the Boyd Lab was during ME 2700: Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design, being trained by a student worker on the on-campus fabrication shop’s machinery. Now a Boyd technician himself, Colin trains students on the machines (such as the mill pictured above), and completes job requests for clubs and courses.

“I saw the role and it sat in the back of my mind until I realized, ‘Oh, that would be good for my career to better understand how things are made,’” he says.

The job has been a chance to apply what he learns in mechanical engineering classes — for example, when he practiced equations about the spin rate of a lathe in a course and then worked on a job request using the lathe in the lab. After getting the feed rate wrong the first time, “I got to think of the equation that I learned in class and use it in here without being told to — which is pretty cool and rewarding.”

The Boyd Lab has provided a chance to network with and learn from other lab technicians, students, TAs, faculty and staff, he says, along with “the enjoyment of working with your hands and seeing a project through.”