History of The Ulmer Family Light Lab

The Light Lab was designed with four Makerspaces in the areas of: natural sciences, fabrication, media and computing, and design. These spaces are meant not to belong to any one teacher, but rather to allow Lower School teachers to build on their integrated curriculum and provide the space and the tools to integrate instruction. Our students are growing up in an incredibly connected world, and it no longer makes sense to teach in isolation.

To further help our students become agents of change in creating a more just world is to give them opportunities for designing and making. We want them to see the impact they can haveover objects and systems in their world. To this end, our students are being exposed to a human-centered design thinking process, which asks,

"How can I create something that would make something easier for someone else?”

In her book Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, Sylvia Libow Martinez says, “Empowering students is an act of showing trust by transferring power and agency to the learner. Helping young people learn how to handle the responsibility that goes along with this power is the sensible way to do it. Creating opportunities to develop student voice and inspiring them with modern tools and modern knowledge needed to solve real problems is part of this job.”

FCS Receives $1 Million Gift for Lower School

In January of 2016 Head of School Craig Sellers announced that Friends’ Central alumnus Rich Ulmer ’60 and his wife, Bev, pledged $1 million to bring to life the Lower School Light Lab. The gift honors Rich’s parents, Audrie Gardam Ulmer ’37 and Walter Ulmer, and his sister, Carolyn Ulmer Gorman ’66.

Designed to spark the imagination, creativity, and problem-solving mindset children will need to succeed in a rapidly changing world, the Light Lab felt like the right place for the Ulmers to put their gift. Rich shared, “I love the idea of starting young, of exposing little kids to new and exciting materials and ideas and letting them explore, asking questions and looking for answers, but not necessarily finding them. It’s really about the process of learning, not an end product. Bev and I identified with the purpose of this project and feel a connection to the idea of a Light Lab, a place designed to light up inquiry-based learning as soon as possible in a child’s life.”

Sellers was thrilled to share this exciting news of the Ulmers’ generosity with the community. He commented,

“The Ulmer Family Light Lab puts Friends’ Central at the very forefront of education. In addition to providing a facility that has no equal for our youngest students, we see this as a visionary investment in teaching and learning that recognizes the importance of making, designing, prototyping, and the like as integral to great education. I am thrilled that Rich and Bev are making such an incredible contribution to transforming the Friends’ Central experience for years to come.”

Light Advisory Board

To ensure that Friends' Central's curriculum remains at the forefront of creative and collaborative education, we have created an Advisory Board of national thought leaders in Maker Education whose role will be to challenge and inspire educators as we engage in long-term, strategic thinking about the potential for learning and teaching in this unprecedented facility. The Advisory Board will lift up Friends' Central School and the Light Lab in national conversations and connect the School with organizations in greater Philadelphia so this resource can be shared with teachers and students in neighboring communities.

Advisory Board:

• Colin Angevine '05 - Chief Operating Officer, jEugene; former STEAM and Makerspace Director and teacher, Friends' Central School
• Brie Daley - Director, Ulmer Family Light Lab, Friends' Central School; Founding Director, DREAM Labs at The Baldwin School
• Yasmin B. Kafai - Chair, Teaching, Learning and Leadership Division, UPenn Graduate School of Education; author of Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming
• Jessica Parker - Education Community Manager, Maker Ed; author of Teaching Tech-Savvy Kids: Bringing Digital Media into the Classroom
• Kelly Bird Pierre - Lower School Principal, Friends' Central School
• Mariama Richards - Assistant Head of School for Academic Program, Friends' Central School
• AnnMarie Polsenberg Thomas '97 - Associate Professor, School of Engineering, Schulze School of Entrepreneurship and the Opus College of Business, St. Thomas University; Founder/Director, Playful Learning Lab; Author of Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of Innovation
• Craig N. Sellers - Head of School, Friends' Central School
• Lisa Kay Solomon '89 - Adjunct Professor, Design Strategy Program, California College of the Arts; Founder, Innovation Studio; Author of Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change
• Josh Weisgrau - Project Director, Learning Studios with Digital Promise Global; former STEAM and Makerspace teacher, Friends' Central School