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USC Aikens College of Sciences and Engineering held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, April 16, for its new Pacer Makerspace and Machine Shop.

It's a workspace that will give engineering students hands-on experience and will support applied research projects.

The space includes 3D printers, laser cutters and woodworking tools.

USCA Chancellor Dr. Dan Heimmermann said that the facility offers a fabrication space to create physical artifacts like sensors, electronic and mechanical devices that can be leveraged for commercialized solutions and product advances.

Heimmermann said that with this new facility, and the upcoming addition of a new bachelors degree in electrical engineering, the college is anticipating that its engineering programs will grow from 150 students to 300 students over the next few years.

This is really an exciting day for USC Aiken, said Teresa Haas, chair of the Aiken County Commission for Higher Education. This is a dedicated space for students, faculty and internal and external collaborators to bring their ideas to life by exploring and developing unconventional and creative ideas.

Scott McKay from the schools department of Sciences and Engineering said: Were going to expand that capacity to meet our workforce needs this really helps us as our engineering and computer science programs are growing at 30% year over year, we hope to keep building to this.

For upcoming senior and mechanical engineering student Truman Brabham this new addition to USCAs campus is an opportunity to learn skills that can be applied directly in the workplace.

It really means a lot to the faculty and also the students, it really opens up an endless range of possibilities for being able to do projects and take that knowledge that you learn in the classroom and apply it to real life equipment and real life projects," he said.

Brabham, who is the president of USCAs Engineering Student Association, hopes to attend graduate school and pursue aerospace engineering.

Yaraxy Martinez, another upcoming senior studying mechanical engineering, said that the new space makes her feel more confident in what her abilities will be post graduation.

Having this will bring us more comfort about what engineering is because everything we learn, its going to be just math-related and theory and hypothesis and things like that. And then here, we can learn how to do things, we will learn how to work it, said Martinez. Once we get into the real workplace, we will be like I have seen this before.

Martinez is hoping to start her career in the CSRA. We have so many places. We have Bridgestone, we have SRNS, SRNL, and so many other places, she said.

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USC Aiken holds ribbon-cutting for Pacer machine shop | Aiken Area Education - The Post and Courier