Houston Community College Earns Top 50 Honors

KATY MAGAZINE NEWS

February 21, 2020

Great Value Colleges has named Houston Community College’s IDEAStudio as one of its top 50 Best Maker Spaces. IDEAStudio is housed at HCC’s West Houston Institute (WHI), located on the Alief Hayes campus.

The studio’s name is an acronym for Innovation, Design Entrepreneurship, Arts & Sciences, and for the past two years has served students and faculty using both traditional and cutting-edge technologies.

WHI director Dr. Edmund “Butch” Herod said receiving this recognition is both an honor and an important affirmation of The Institute’s vision to embrace the challenge of meeting learners’ needs.

“We must re-imagine and reinvent higher education to provide our students with the essential mindsets and skill sets urgently needed for current and future jobs,” he said. “One of these essential capacities is creativity, which the World Economic Forum lists as the third most sought after employee attribute.”

Among the 50 colleges listed, HCC is ranked number 43 and one of only two community colleges listed. HCC ranks among such universities as Columbia, Princeton, Ohio State, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Duke, UT, Rice, Harvard, and Stanford, that also made the list. The maker spaces were selected by meeting certain criteria, including evidence of providing space for a wide range of students, evidence of offering the best technology/equipment, evidence of commitment to future expansion, combined number of recommendations on the lists and evidence of innovation in creating a collaborative learning environment.

Program Director Jordan Carswell said the recognition is a result of a collaborative effort of the IDEAStudio team to offer programming that gives students and faculty many ways to develop and practice their creativity.

“We have worked with over 1,000 students in the past two years, from all areas of the institution and they can’t believe this resource is available to them as part of their education,” he said. “So many of them have expressed how relevant it has been to their experience here at HCC, and that it’s been one of their favorite learning experiences.”

Carswell also expressed how the success of IDEAStudio speaks to the foresight of both Dr. Herod and HCC’s Northwest College President Dr. Zachary Hodges for looking to the future and having the vision to provide a fully equipped maker space for the college community. Hodges said this is all part of HCC’s goal to recreate the higher education experience for today’s student.

“I am proud of our creative team at the West Houston Institute that built a maker space that demonstrates our commitment to design thinking, active learning, and creativity,” said Hodges. “Making builds self-confidence, teamwork, and 21st century mind sets necessary for thriving in today’s world of work.”

See the Full List of Great Value Colleges HERE.

For more information about HCC’s IDEAStudio CLICK HERE.