“The Design Studio renovation was one of our high-priority projects during my time as chair,” said Ajay Prasad, Engineering Alumni Distinguished Professor and former department chair. “It was clear that having such a modern, attractive makerspace would really put us on the map regionally and nationally and hugely enrich the education of our current students while also helping to recruit the best talent to our program going forward. The project was a major undertaking with significant contributions from our students, staff and faculty, as well as UD administration, development and facilities. Most importantly, our alumni played a crucial role in terms of advocacy and financial support. This was truly a team effort, and I am delighted that the Design Studio of our dreams is now a reality.” 

The renovation was made possible through generous community support, including from alumni Dan Hudson, managing principal at MRP Industrial; Terri Kelly, chair of the UD Board of Trustees and former president and CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates; Mike Seitel CEO of Norwalt Automation Group; and Michael Yon, retired managing director at JPMorgan Chase. 

The Department of Mechanical Engineering celebrated the renovation with an official ribbon-cutting for the Design Studio in December, welcoming alumni, donors and University leadership. Alumnus Paul Costello, former president of Evergreen MGT Consulting and current chair of the department's Mechanical Engineering Advisory Council, spoke at the event, reminiscing on his time in the program and the impact the mechanical engineering department had on his career, which included 37 years at the DuPont Company and 10 years running his own management consulting company.

“I owe much of my success to the education I received here at Delaware,” Costello said. “The opening of this beautiful and impressive Design Studio could only have been brought about, in my view, through three things: vision, commitment and support.” 

It’s a sentiment shared by many involved with the Design Studio renovation, including Jenni Buckley, professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the Design Studio. After receiving her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from UD in 2001, Buckley returned to campus 10 years later and quickly began leading the charge to renovate the space. The Design Studio project began with a 400-square-foot “Senior Room,” which Buckley outfitted with additional tools and workbenches. From there, unused labs, classrooms, storage closets and other spaces were incorporated to form the new Design Studio. 

Buckley credited the successful renovation to the passion and support of past and present department leadership, other UD employees, alumni and students. 

“This is a community project, built by the UD MechE community for the UD MechE community,” Buckley said. “I was definitely stubborn enough to keep this project going, but I was part of a whole team of people who made this dream possible. An entire community made this happen. It is a gift from one generation of UD MechEs to future generations.” 

For senior Aisley Bergdoll and many other mechanical engineering students, the Design Studio is an integral part of the UD experience — it’s a place for key hands-on experiences and a place to connect with and grow the mechanical engineering community.

“Being able to use the Design Studio has been such an important part of being a mechanical engineer at UD,” Bergdoll said. “Spencer Lab is really the home of any mechanical engineering student, and I think any one of us would tell you that it’s played a very critical role in our education to become mechanical engineers. Having an area to be able to work with wood, metal and other materials is a really great thing to have in this major and is definitely one of the highlights of my time here.” 

Prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony, seniors majoring in biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering presented their capstone projects, many of which were sponsored by industry partners, including W.L. Gore & Associates, Under Armour, Stanley Black and Decker, The Mary Campbell Center and the UD Institute for Engineering Driven Health. 

One team, sponsored by the Perry Initiative, worked on creating a college laboratory curriculum for engineering students to learn about the mechanical properties of different musculoskeletal tissues within the human body. The team designed surrogate muscle tissues and performed compression and tension testing on them using a Mark-10 test frame.  

Bergdoll was one of four students who worked on the project and noted that she and the team were pleased with how much they accomplished in the fall. With the spring semester now underway, the team is planning to use the renovated Design Studio to continue the project using a different test frame and software. 

“I think the recent Design Studio renovations have really made Spencer Lab a great place to be able to hang out, do your work, and be able to meet with your project team,” Bergdoll said. “There has been a great improvement in the collaborative areas, giving the students way more open space to be able to do these things, so the team and I are very excited to be able to utilize this area to have our weekly meetings. Another area the team uses a lot is the test lab that we have in Spencer. We’ve used this area a lot for testing our musculoskeletal surrogates. It has two super nice Instrons that we’ve been able to use to conduct tensile testing of our tendon models. With the renovations, and all the extra windows, it’s made the test lab a very nice area to be able to do these tests and has felt much more spacious.” 

While the renovations are complete, there are still opportunities for the community to support the Design Studio. Contact Heather Barron at hbarron@udel.edu or 302-831-8636 for more information.