10 Years of the Hive!

Side-by-side comparison of Seeley G. Mudd when it served as the Sciences Library vs now as the Hive.

From being a mere whisper of an idea in the Pomona College President’s Office to the full-fledged (and ever-evolving) Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, the Hive has officially been an institution of the 7Cs for 10 years. That’s 10 years of creativity, innovation, collaboration, inspiration, connections, failing, learning, making, and more. Over the school year, we’ll be featuring little pieces of our last ten years in each coming newsletter, from 10 years of space design to partnerships, courses, workshops, events, our students, our staff, faculty grants, student creativity grants, and more! To kick off this initiative, we’d like to provide a brief overview of the Hive’s history to illustrate where we began and where we stand today.

The very building in which the Hive lives used to be the Pomona Seeley G. Mudd Sciences Library. Hence, the strange and scrappy features of our space, from the arched hallways on the second floor to the corner pockets under the stairwells on either side, where you’ll find bean bags to lounge and study. In 2014, a conversation began in the Pomona President’s Office (David Oxtoby was president at the time) about a “creativity and innovation initiative” project. Faculty and students began discussing the need for a space that fosters creativity, collaboration, and innovation at the 5Cs, and this project would eventually evolve into the Hive. They found Claremont Colleges alumni, Rick Sontag (HMC ’64) and Susan Sontag (Pomona ’64), who were interested in giving seed money to the initiative, essentially functioning as an academic startup.

Consultants Tom Maiorana and Vida Mia García were recruited to interview hundreds of faculty, students, and staff at the 5Cs, drawing on Stanford d.school principles. Through developing personas and creating points-of-view (POVs) that helped shape who the users would be, they found an overwhelming need and desire for a space with a curricular focus and programming for students and faculty that is still offered today. The seed money and their research findings enabled the prototyping of experiential activities, workshops, and teaching experiments, as well as assessing the needs and strengths of teachers and students. The initiative was granted a small corner of Seeley G. Mudd and began offering workshops, a Human-Centered Design class, and a prototyping room for students to design and create freely. Rick and Susan were so pleased with the response that they decided to make it a long-term design center and donated $25 million to the project. This catalyzed an enormous launch point for remodeling and construction to expand Seeley G. Mudd into a larger center, making the Hive what it is now.

Over the past decade, through iteration, prototyping, and development of our mission, we’ve reached our current goal of growing students’ making, human understanding, and innovative problem-solving skills through curricular, co-curricular, and space offerings. We host workshops and events that introduce alternative ways of engaging with the liberal arts. We offer project-based learning classes where our students get first-hand experience working on design challenges with partners from startups, nonprofits, government agencies, and more. Our making spaces provide students access to materials for building, crafting, sewing, screen printing, woodworking, and sound and music production. Courses from around the 7Cs are taught in our flexible and engaging classrooms. Everyone in the 7C community is welcome to develop and express themselves in our space!

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by Salina Muñoz