Michigan Engineering Software Hardware (MESH) &
Student Projects Lab (SPLab)
The SPLab was created nearly over a decade ago to provide Michigan EECS students with the facilities to pursue personal and academic projects outside of a structured classroom environment. It sits in the EECS building, room 2435. MESH is a student organization that developed later to facilitate these personal projects. During my tenure at the University of Michigan, MESH was the acting steward to the SPLab although technically the two were independent. The MESH homepage has more information on their current activities.
My involvment in MESH/SPLab was to serve as the SPLab President. I oversaw the day to day operations of the lab including equipment, students and general lab safety. MESH ran weekly meetings in the SPLab and we held tutorials on equipment use. In addition to extracurricular projects, we also assisted with a senior design projects.
The EECS department was reluctant to give out physical keys to every student wanting access, so the SPLab was controlled via an electronic key system using iButtons and an access script with full logging. We also received a number of equipment and support donations from Dell and Microsoft.
