Innovation at Lawrenceville

Innovation is a big part of the Lawrenceville School community, and the school fosters it and is responsible for it in many different ways. For one, the school has taken many measures and is leading the charge in sustainable innovation. It has implemented a 30-acre solar farm, with 24,934 solar panels, to provide for 90 percent of the energy the school uses. Additionally, on the topic of cleaner energy, Lawrenceville invested in new steam-powered heating systems that aid in reducing carbon emissions, and five buildings on campus are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. These developments have allowed the school to dramatically decrease the school’s carbon footprint, achieving levels close to net neutral. Aside from renewable energy, the school has also introduced programs designed to reduce waste; with composting and recycling initiatives, crop and meat production from the Big Red Farm, and a close monitoring of surrounding watersheds, the school has continued to innovate in various ways to improve life on and off campus- the core reason for innovation.

Clearly, the school has done much in the area of sustainability. However, Lawrenceville also puts its focus on providing ways and opportunities for the students themselves to innovate in other fields. Recently, it unveiled the newly renovated Gruss Center for Art and Design- a space for visual arts, but also technological and mechanical innovation. In this space, students are able to make use of state of the art laser and water jet cutters, 3D printers, welding bays, and power tools. Students obviously have the resources necessary for mechanical innovation- that is, the actual building and production of ideas. Although these assets are incredibly useful, the ideas behind them and the fostering and mentoring of those ideas are arguably equally, if not more, important. The faculty and courses provide the support necessary for students to turn their ideas into reality. With engineering, programming, and even courses titled “Design for Social Change”, students can learn the skills behind innovating and creating. In my own experience, the expectations for students to make use of the available resources to create something good is not disappointed. This year, in my Intro to Engineering class, we were taught how to use the above-listed resources, and were given the opportunity to use them. The projects we did in class with them were basic, but I started to see how they could apply elsewhere. After a class in which we experimented with 3D-printers, I was trying to work through a math problem in my calculus class, when the marker I was using dried up. My math teacher made an offhand comment to me, saying that the only reason the markers had such a short lifespan was that there was no way to keep them upside down to let all the ink drip down to the tip, so they had to be tossed before they were actually over. Seeing an opportunity for a small improvement in my community, I decided to 3D print a couple of hollow cubes that could be attached to the whiteboards and hold up the markers. It was not a life-changing innovation, but it still impacted my math class and teacher, making our work a little bit more efficient and convenient. This was not a singular example, though- students in my community make innovations like these all the time. The culture of innovation in Lawrenceville is significant and growing, and will continue to grow to reflect the innovative culture in the outside world.

Source:

https://lawrenceville.org

https://gcad.lawrenceville.org