At the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, they’ve got trash covered. Literally.
Attractive metal plates now sit over garbage chutes throughout the research campus, courtesy of a nifty collaboration between custodian Judy Haines and the facility’s technical teams.
Haines grew tired of the makeshift cardboard covers placed over unused garbage chutes. Her idea: make something that would be handsome but durable. Fortunately, help was just a floor or two away.
The Knight Campus is home to cutting-edge facilities like a clean room and those that include equipment for rapid X-ray imaging as well as 3D printing and prototype fabrication.
After Haines’ idea was green-lighted, she and the Facilities team partnered with Oregon Fabrication and Design, which used rapid prototyping and fabrication capabilities to design and produce the custom metal covers. It’s a small example of how ideas quickly turn into practical solutions with the equipment and expertise available on site at the Knight Campus.
The metal covers won’t succumb to a coffee mishap while still deterring trash from being tossed into an unused chute, which can be messy and wasteful.
A modest project, perhaps, but for Haines, representative of the Knight Campus culture.
“There’s magic at the Knight Campus — it’s just special here,” she said. “We’re all considered valuable here, we’re all validated for our hard work, and that feels good.”
“It’s a compliment to Judy and to our team,” added Albert Aragon, custodial services manager. “It’s not just the architects of this great facility but it’s also the rest of us, we’re always asking, ‘How can we make things better?’”
—Matt Cooper, University Communications