Introducing Ryan

Hi, welcome to ENGR 2192 Intro to Making. I’m Ryan (They, Them),  a lifelong maker, tinker, and daydreamer. I earned my BA in psychology from UT Austin before cultivating careers as an architectural woodworker, then aviation structures design engineer, and now academic makerspace manager and instructor. In pursuit of inclusive community-building, I earned an MA in Creative Leadership from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Taking on the Trinity role helped me rediscover my playful and curious side. Slowly shelved as I acquired the skills to navigate the construction and aircraft industries. Professionally, I started in the family architectural woodwork business. Not knowing a thing about woodwork or manufacturing of any kind, I assumed I’d be project managing. Cutting deals and schmoozing. I was wrong. I began on the shop floor. My father's crew was sweaty, covered in prison tattoos, and incredibly skilled. They had recently finished the historical restoration of the Texas State Capitol. They remade everything, windows, doors, wainscoting, to exact historical specifications. I swallowed my pride, put my head down, and got woodwork fit.

After a few years, I earned the Head of Manufacturing position. Our business model was simple: we said yes, and then we figured it out. We scaled from a kitchen a month to a kitchen a day, and from 25 people to 200. Business was good, but at 30, I realized I needed a shift. My attention span seems to run on 7-to-10-year cycles. I moved into luxury wide-body jet interiors, building wood-covered composite cabinets for flying five-star hotels. The change of pace was refreshing and freed up time for a regular 30-mile bike commute. Eventually, I found myself in charge of the CNC department, then the Air Force One cabinet crew, and was finally recruited into engineering. As the only team member without an engineering degree, I was given one month to become productive in SolidWorks. I figured it out.

When the San Antonio aviation operations shuttered, I chose a new path: starting a makerspace at Trinity. My partner asked, 'What the heck is a makerspace?' Dunno, but I’ma figure it out. Eight years in and I think I’m starting to. My first woodwork crew taught me to respect the challenge of now while relying on lessons from past experiences. We never took for granted what we thought we knew and instead relied on brainstorming, mockups, and constant observation. We worked as a community to tackle each project. I sensed that a maker space works similarly. It’s a space for communal problem-solving and sharing. 

I have spent my time at Trinity transforming a traditional machine shop into an inclusive, experiential learning space. We’ve moved away from a model of fabricating to order and toward a space where users tinker, play, and iteratively engage with failure. Our community has grown from a dozen engineering students to hundreds of users across all disciplines. Ultimately, that is what I believe this position is about: passing on the skills to use these 'crazy machines' so that others have the agency to create and share. Hopefully i can bring the spirit of figuring it out through community support and play to this version of Intro to Making.