COA+A faculty featured in ‘Schools Respond to the Pandemic’

Faculty from the College of Arts + Architecture (CoA+A) will lead the online discussion, “Schools Respond to the Pandemic,” hosted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) at 4 p.m., Friday, April 3. This discussion is part of a series presented by the ACSA as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak called “Pivot to Online Learning.”

CoA+A faculty presenters are José Gámez, interim director of the School of Architecture; Alex Cabral, director of the School of Architecture/Storrs fabrication labs; Robby Sachs, Storrs fabrication labs manager; and Heather Freeman and Thomas Schmidt, professors in the Department of Art & Art History. These faculty, along with faculty from the College of Computing and Informatics, the Lee College of Engineering, and the local private school Charlotte Latin, have been producing personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care providers, using 3-D printing technology.

Their work, including design innovations that have greatly accelerated production, has already become a model for others who wish to support the health care industry during the crisis. UNC Charlotte faculty have been contacted by academic communities in states as far away as Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and California.

“We’ve begun sharing our work to get their labs running and hopefully helping with the impending national shortage of supplies,” Cabral said in a recent article in Inside UNC Charlotte.

Read more about their efforts in this article in the Charlotte Post.