There’s so much more to 3-D printing than making miniature husky statues for your office or creating other trinkets as gifts or Halloween costume accessories—although that’s still pretty neat. The technology can also pay huge dividends for faculty members in their classroom instruction and research.

In April at TEXPO, Information Technology Services’ third annual Teaching and Technology Expo, faculty members shared how they and their colleagues are incorporating 3-D printing into teaching and learning. Mark Sivak, who leads the 3-D Printing Studio in Snell Library, led the discussion, providing an overview of how faculty can take advantage of the studio—which offers a full suite of 3-D fabrication and modeling technologies.

“We have worked with every college, with projects ranging from creating 3-D versions of early Christian poems to the more hard sciences and engineering,” said Sivak, associate teaching professor in the Department of Art + Design and the College of Engineering. “There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with this technology, and it’s here to stay.”