There’s a joke that goes, “School is where you store kids until they are ready to become productive members of society.” Like all comedy, there’s a grain of truth in it, especially the storage part. Higher Education involves so much stuff, it’s enough to hurt your head. There’s all the stuff students take to school with them, all the stuff they have to buy, all the stuff they have to read and know – and all in the hopes of enriching the brain-stuff between their ears.
Luckily, it’s easier than ever to manage the stuff of college. And one of the coolest ways to see this is to look at Smart Lockers. One of the best applications for them is in a post office type setting. They allow a delivery person to place packages in a temporary use locker. This smart locker then sends an email to the recipient and notifies them that a package is waiting for them. They show up, tap in a code on the touchscreen and get their package. No key management, no need to staff a desk and the locker doesn’t wait empty 99% of the time. It’s ready to hold the next package for whoever needs it. See what Christy Bishop has to say about them here.
But storage solutions don’t have to be high-tech to be brilliant. For the high-use, high traffic environments found in Universities, Modular Casework delivers a genius all it’s own. Reception desks, learning labs, mailrooms, day use lockers and student health centers are just a few of the places that modular casework can provide a better solution than custom millwork. Not only is it infinitely flexible, but modular casework is also more durable than millwork. Some students may be on the five year plan, but you don’t want to have to enroll a fresh install that often. And by virtue of being modular, existing installs can grow, be reconfigured and repaired in all the ways that custom millwork just can’t. Linda Skelton has a nice overview here.
The times we live in and the information students must master are growing ever more complicated, but there’s no reason why stuff and the space it occupies has to overwhelm us. Students, faculty and administrators have enough to deal with. After all, their patient efforts build the future. We’re proud, in our small way, to handle the stuff we can on-campus.
