2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This empirical full paper investigates the characteristics, skills, and dispositions that enable undergraduate staff to effectively support learning and innovation within university makerspaces. Drawing on interviews with current and former student mentors from a large undergraduate engineering program’s makerspace network, this qualitative study explores how makerspace staff act as facilitators of adaptive expertise, modeling reflective practice and problem-solving that complement formal coursework.

Makerspaces are increasingly central to engineering education, yet their success often depends on the human infrastructure that sustains them. Prior research has described makerspaces’ contributions to creativity and design learning, but less attention has been paid to the people who make these spaces work. This study builds on scholarship in adaptive expertise (e.g., Hatano & Inagaki, McKenna, Neeley) and experiential learning (Kolb) to examine how student mentors foster environments that promote flexible thinking, peer learning, and iterative problem-solving, qualities often underdeveloped in traditional engineering curricula oriented toward routine expertise. By characterizing the interpersonal and cognitive competencies of effective makerspace mentors, this study contributes to a growing body of work on mentoring, belonging, and experiential education in engineering.

The study is grounded in adaptive expertise theory and experiential learning frameworks, which together highlight the value of reflection, iteration, and situated problem-solving. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four current and former undergraduate staff representing diverse areas of technical focus, including additive manufacturing, mechatronics, and machining. Each interview was transcribed and coded inductively using thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns in how mentors described their experiences, perceived challenges, and views on effective mentorship. The first author, a former makerspace manager, incorporated reflexive memos to bracket positionality and triangulate emerging interpretations.

Participants emphasized that while technical proficiency can be learned on the job, interpersonal and reflective skills distinguish highly effective staff. Across cases, key traits included curiosity, communication, empathy, situational awareness, and a willingness to learn alongside others. Mentors viewed themselves not only as safety stewards or technical tutors, but as community builders who help students “fail comfortably,” navigate complex tools and projects, and develop confidence in open-ended problem-solving. Organizational and cultural challenges also emerged: frequent faculty turnover, inconsistent departmental support, and barriers to access limited continuity in the mentorship model and eroded institutional memory, highlighting the importance of stable staffing structures and knowledge transfer mechanisms.

Findings suggest that makerspace staffing strategies should emphasize the recruitment and development of students with strong interpersonal and leadership skills, curiosity, and a mindset aligned with adaptive expertise rather than purely technical mastery. Training programs that integrate reflective practice and peer mentoring could strengthen the educational function of these spaces and align them more closely with broader engineering learning outcomes. This work offers empirically grounded insight into how makerspaces cultivate adaptive expertise through human relationships, contributing to research on mentoring, experiential learning, and design education.