The Entrepreneurship Garage, or the Garage, has been relocated to a new space in Partners I on Centennial Campus after previously being located in Innovation Hall. The Garage has been on NC State’s campus for 10 years, five of which were in Innovation Hall.
According to Technical Lead Eren Hebert, the Garage is meant to be the hub for all entrepreneurship on campus. Hebert said the Garage occupies a 23,000-square-foot space and aims to serve many students in different kinds of work.
Approximately 800 members, comprised of both staff and students, work to maintain the Garage for the rest of the university, according to Hebert.
“The Garage is programs, spaces and resources provided by core staff and augmented by student support,” Hebert said.
The Garage’s move from Innovation Hall to Partners I was made in part to increase visibility on campus, Hebert said.
“We are centrally co-located with the library across the street, so we have high visibility,” Hebert said. “We’re closer to some of the engineering and textiles buildings. We’re in a prominent location here on Centennial Campus.”
Hebert said the transition to Partners I “didn’t happen overnight.” The new space has been a vision for many years and the finished product is “a realization of all those efforts over time.”
The space allows students to utilize specialized equipment to explore ideas, experiment and prototype using new resources.
“We’ve added a dedicated woodworking room to control dust,” Hebert said. “We have a dedicated air filtration system for the 3D printers and laser cutters. This space is much more airy and won’t fill up with fumes when people are working on projects.”
To be sure, the Garage provides more value than just physical resources; the space also allows students to interact with a real-world business setting. For example, partnerships with HQ Raleigh allow beneficial collisions to occur and introduce students to different opportunities.
Haley Huie, director of experiential learning for the Garage, expressed the importance of this kind of collaboration.
“When we talk about the beauty of co-working, that goes back to the idea of bringing people together under one roof who will engage in these beneficial collisions,” Huie said. “They might meet a dream team member, or they might be a dream team member for somebody else.”
HQ Raleigh provides resources such as legal office hours and marketing services and helps in networking with other businesses. This partnered location allows students more chances to connect with local companies and professionals, such as Savannah Ballbe, the community coordinator at HQ Raleigh. Ballbe stressed the importance of the connection the Garage is able to provide to students.
“What’s really special about this location is because we’re partnering with the Garage, students are able to have firsthand access to startup companies in the Raleigh area,” Ballbe said. “It puts a foot in the door with internship opportunities and jobs after college with students connecting with these companies.”
HQ Raleigh is also connected with the Poole College of Management, so its collaboration with students isn’t new. However, bringing the Garage onto campus makes these opportunities more accessible to more students.
“I think in the future, the collaboration with students and HQ community is going to be really cool,” Ballbe said. “I know a lot of inquiries of HQ Members wanting to use the Garage with students working on projects hand-in-hand.”
Nick Sischo, a fifth-year studying environmental engineering, utilized the Entrepreneurship Garage in his efforts to launch his own startup, Trashr.io.
“The premise of the company is that we build sensors and then put them in dumpsters,” Sischo said. “We buy acrylic, and then we use the laser table to cut it into shape and then build our electronics out that way inside of the body of the sensor.”
Sischo said he 3D printed several different versions to see how various casings would fit the electronics.
“Having access to those resources really helped speed up the development of the company,” Sischo said.
Now that the Garage has expanded on campus, creative and driven students have a space full of opportunity. The Garage offers “Start Here Mondays” every week, and students can attend upcoming events listed on the online calendar. For students interested in learning more about the Entrepreneurship Garbage can visit their website.
*Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with the correct name of the Entrepreneurship Garage.
Dasola Olanrewaju, a fourth-year studying computer engineering and electrical engineering, explains workshop spaces at the eGarage new-member orientation on Monday, Feb. 11, 2019 at Innovation Hall on Centennial Campus. The eGarage has multiple rooms for students to create prototyping projects and share entrepreneurial ideas.
