Makers [of Slime] at the World Maker Faire

The students hosted a Beloit booth and presented their stress-reducing slime to a diverse crowd of authors, speakers, and creators from tech giants to small businesses.

Chris Mazza’20, who proposed going to the Maker Faire, says his classmate YJ Na’20 came up with the idea from her experience. “We innovated our own recipe of what we found to be the best kind of mixture—texture, consistency, and how it held up over time. I remember the moment when we first got our hands on this slime. The room—the air—was just energetic.”

The Maker Faire describes itself as “part science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new.”

Na and Mazza were joined by Emma Dawson’18, Hoodish Domun’20, Chris Fraga’19, and Yusuke Hatano’20 in the New York Hall of Science Sept. 23-24.

The group’s trip was funded by the Beloit Funding Board, which is composed of elected students. The Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Beloit (CELEB) also assisted the team. Mazza had taken an entrepreneurship class with Brian Morello’85, the center’s director, last year. Through Morello’s class, he became familiar with Beloit College’s own Maker Lab, located in CELEB’s space in downtown Beloit, which is equipped with 3D printers, scanners, sewing machines, irons, and other tools. Mazza serves as the lab’s supervisor and treasurer.

“We [at CELEB] were there as advisors to help him create his plan and application,” Morello says of Mazza. “He came forward with an idea and we helped him make sense of it. I think in the end, it was a really good experience in project management.”