USC Iovine and Young Academy, collaborators open engineering lab offering South L.A. youth a path to STEM careers

Faculty and students at the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy have collaborated on the design of a new material science lab for underserved South Los Angeles youth and created the curriculum that will be taught there to more than 750 students annually.

The newly opened SoLa Material Science and Engineering Lab, powered by the Howmet Aerospace Foundation, is located in the SoLa Tech and Entrepreneurship Center, powered by Riot Games, at the SoLa Beehive on East 60th Street, four miles south of USC’s University Park Campus.

The lab was developed in collaboration with the SoLa Foundation and made possible with support from the Howmet foundation and telecommunications giant Verizon. It features an array of creative tools, including 3D printers and other technologies to encourage students to explore product innovation.

The classes offered are inspired by the USC Iovine and Young Academy’s unique “challenge-based learning framework,” which encourages students to find innovative solutions to complex problems.

“The Iovine and Young Academy was established to create new types of learning, to democratize learning,” said Thanassis Rikakis, dean of the academy. “That is what we are doing with our own students at IYA. But if we really want to have a broader effect in our neighborhoods, we have to take that methodology and figure out how to scale it in our community and beyond.”

USC Iovine and Young Academy students were encouraged to listen to the needs of the local community before coming up with creative ideas to make the space more engaging.

“To actually see furniture and tools and scissors and all the machines that I was stressed out about researching and ordering being here, it just feels so surreal,” said Iovine and Young Academy student Ayonnah Tinsley, who worked as a social impact intern at the SoLa Foundation.

“What we had to keep in mind was students’ personalities and how we can bring a program that we work at the university to an audience of younger kids, which was a new challenge for us to think about,” fellow Iovine and Young Academy student Sama Shah said.

Daniel Rosove, senior director of partnerships for SoLa Impact, believes the lab will make a big difference in the lives of local youth and encourage them to consider careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“USC involvement was completely catalytic to one of the chief deliverables that our partners at Howmet wanted, which was a material science and engineering workforce training fellowship for high school students,” he said. “The purpose of that fellowship is to seed and inspire a love of STEM as a way to go into a professional path and a career in that world. USC IYA’s expertise, staff and guidance were indispensable for us opening up this facility.”