From film to fintech, JU aims to build hands-on skills, job prospects with STEAM Institute

Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
·2 min read
A stock ticker displays company prices outside a classroom at Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute designed for learning technology of financial services and and geographic information.
A stock ticker displays company prices outside a classroom at Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute designed for learning technology of financial services and and geographic information.

A sort of one-stop workshop for arts and technical education opened this week at Jacksonville University with a universal goal: help make college students more competitive job candidates.

“The STEAM Institute embodies Jacksonville University’s commitment to applied learning,” JU President Tim Cost said in an announcement of the debut of a center for learning in fields ranging from animation and fintech to cybersecurity and robotics.

The 30,000-square-foot center is designed to help students get hands-on experience in STEAM fields — science, technology, engineering, arts and math — in settings that also foster job skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity.

The two-story building includes studios for graphics, illustration, design, animation, film and immersive learning.

A healthcare student uses virtual reality headgear and controls to examine a virtual heart inside Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute.
A healthcare student uses virtual reality headgear and controls to examine a virtual heart inside Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute.

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There’s also a lab for fintech and geographic information systems and another for mechatronics (advanced manufacturing) and animatronics, as well as engineering design work areas and a cyber-forensics lab next to a “cyber range” the school promotes as “a safe, legal environment to gain hands-on cyber skills and a secure environment for product development.”

“We are welcoming in a new era in education … with many pathways,” interim Provost Sherry Jackson said.

Classrooms and works areas in the institute hinted at some of those paths.

In one room, students worked with virtual reality images of human anatomy.

In another, they practiced determining a maximum subarray, a figure that matters in computer science for quickly measuring digitized images.

Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute is designed as an applied-learning center for students learning subjects ranging from film and data science to fintech and robotics.
Jacksonville University's STEAM Institute is designed as an applied-learning center for students learning subjects ranging from film and data science to fintech and robotics.

And because guests were touring the place after a ribbon-cutting ceremony, others were explaining the components in robots that students had built to pick up specific objects of specific colors.

Elsewhere, 3D printers sprayed layers of material to create unspecified components.

“We really are leading in the idea of convergence education,” institute Executive Director Bill Hill had told the guests earlier.

Hill said JU administrators “designed the place intentionally, so that engineers and visual artists would work shoulder-to-shoulder.”

The university started an undergraduate major in fintech and an MBA concentration in the field last year, which JU said is complemented by the new institute’s opening.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: JU opens STEAM Institute to merge tech, arts learning, build job skills