New Innovation Center lab invites students to play in the Sandbox
On a recent day at UIC’s Innovation Center, students, faculty and staff used iPads to make colorful designs and MacBooks to write songs using the GarageBand app. Others got a primer on the state-of-the-art Apple Vision Pro headset.
They were all there to celebrate the opening of the Sandbox Lab, a partnership between UIC’s Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services (LARES) and UIC’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Innovation to spur innovation, collaboration and hands-on learning in technology and coding.
The lab at the Innovation Center is a place for students to learn Swift, the programming language for Apple platforms, and to foster community empowerment, said UIC Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda. The UIC Innovation Center currently houses eight corporate-sponsored labs designed to give students real-world experiential learning opportunities.
“This facility is dedicated to innovation, accessibility and community empowerment, principles that lie at the very heart of the University of Illinois Chicago’s mission to provide the broadest access to the highest levels of educational, research and clinical excellence,” Miranda said. “This will become a place where we can explore new frontiers in technology, and where education and industry converge for the greater good.”
Tapping innovation
UIC is demonstrating its commitment to equity and inclusion, Miranda said at the ribbon-cutting event.
“While this lab is open to all our UIC students, we’re proud to be paying special attention to how this space serves our Latino population by partnering with the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services – LARES – program and infusing our projects with specific areas of interest from our UIC Latino communities,” Miranda said.
Learning Swift coding and other skills will boost students’ digital literacy and career prospects, she said. Swift coding skills can open doors to the growing field of app development for Apple systems.
In the lab at the Innovation Center, students will meet weekly for nine weeks over the semester. By the end, they’ll be ready for the Swift Basics certification test.
Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC
Bernard Santarsiero, director of research initiatives, said he has been working since 2022 to bring the lab to UIC. The goal of the partnership behind the lab is to establish a physical space that provides tools — hardware and software — for research and training of students from preschool to college, said Santarsiero.
“Coding through the Sandbox initiative is the first step as students learn how to communicate ideas, information, images, objects and systems as they engage in critical thinking and design,” he said.
Yesenia Estrada, a LARES recruiter, said the lab is designed to expand Swift coding resources and hands-on learning for students, especially Latinos.
“We’re looking to bridge that gap within the tech field where not many Latinos have access to these tools or even know about the opportunities within tech,” Estrada said. “The goal here is to get Latinos into the lab and get them excited about using this technology to share their story and create products that may help our communities.”
Through their experience in the lab, students will ultimately bring innovation into their communities, including the UIC Latino community, Estrada said.
This spring semester, four LARES Ambassadors are completing the nine-week course. They will learn alongside the 15 other UIC students in the Swift 101 cohort and join more than 80 UIC students interested in programming at the Sandbox Lab. Applications for the lab are currently being accepted for the fall semester.
Joanna Arriaga, a junior majoring in sociology and English, said the lab will help her and other students ease into a new field. She’s long been interested in computer science and coding but was afraid to jump in, she said.
“The Sandbox Lab would be able to help me and others overcome nervousness around technology by taking away the pressure,” Arriaga said. “It will have the effect of lifting the creative voices of the Latino community.”
Junior Katherine Teran, majoring in English and literature, said Sandbox will give her the chance to explore different pathways for research and prepare for a future in a professional field.
The partnership is a huge opportunity for UIC, its students and LARES, she said.
“I grew up being one of the only Latina faces in the classrooms of my hometown, so I feel incredibly happy and inspired,” Teran said.
Sandbox lessons
At the celebration, Mitravinda Manjunath, a graduate teaching assistant in the lab, and Muhammad Arham demonstrate Swift coding. The two developed the curriculum for the course with Apple’s Community Education Initiative and will teach it to students enrolled in the lab.
“The aim is to create a space where people from all coding backgrounds can get interested in coding, to learn how to work with the Apple devices and the facilities provided in these devices,” Manjunath said.
Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC
Manjunath said there are three main courses available in the lab.
One is Swift Basics, a structured approach to teaching students the basics of Apple’s Swift programming. That will prepare them to tackle more advanced programming, write applications and earn certification as Swift associates.
Another course is called Everyone Can Create. Over three weeks, students learn the basics of Apple’s creative software including GarageBand, Keynote and iMovie.
“We’ll try to inspire the creativity within the students,” Manjunath said. “Here our focus will be on community-based learning, which is finding the ‘why’ behind the learning.”
In a third course, Spatial Computing, students will learn how to use Apple Vision Pro headgear for spatial computing, augmented reality and virtual reality, said Manjunath.
Elaine Harvey, associate director for innovation and program manager for the Sandbox Lab, added, “We’ve worked for months to develop a curriculum. It is a great way for our lab to address personal, community and global challenges while allowing students to acquire technical content knowledge.”
Even students without technology backgrounds, those who come from medicine or business fields, for example, will learn Swift coding to build apps, Arham said.
“We want them to learn the Swift program to build apps and solve the problems in their communities; that is the main goal,” he said.
Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC
