A new tech repair garage is opening up just off campus and aims to fix devices while also teaching people how to fix it themselves.

The Illini Gadget Garage will provide a space for students and faculty to take their broken electronic devices to get them fixed and an opportunity to work simultaneously with staffers to learn and understand how to repair these devices on their own. The idea is to teach users how to repair and maintain their devices through a collaborative repair process.

As part of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative, one of the main goals of the gadget garage is to reduce electronic waste by prolonging the life of devices. According to Martin Wolske, a research scientist and faculty member in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, part of the reason the garage was founded was to raise awareness about ethical electronic consumerism. 

“There is in an interest in helping to raise awareness about how to select devices that might have a longer life,” said Wolske, who helped develop the gadget garage. “Helping to understand how some devices are intentionally designed to be disposable as opposed to repairable and the impact that that might have on our environment.”

The gadget garage will service all brands of phones, tablets and laptops. It will also work with any device that contains an electronic component, such as a coffee maker or other small home appliances. The one stipulation is that it must be small enough to be carried into the garage. 

Joy Scrogum, another lead developer of the gadget garage and a coordinator of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative, said this project, to some extent, is an exercise of empowerment.

“We have this tendency to see our electronics as literal black boxes that we just think, ‘Oh I don’t know how that works, I’ll never be able to understand how that works,’ ” Scrogum said. “One of the things we want to instill in people through the gadget garage project is that you do have the power to repair and extend the useful life of the devices that you own.” 

The gadget garage staff will consist primarily of graduate students from one of Wolske’s classes; they will hold paid positions. There will also be openings for undergraduates to apply as volunteers to work in the garage.  

With help from the Student Sustainability Committee in the form of a $95,000 grant, the Illini Gadget Garage will open its doors on Sept. 14 to all students and faculty, free of cost for its pilot year. However, an annual membership fee for faculty is being considered. Scrogum said they hope to find a way to make this project financially self-sustainable.

The garage will be open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. and is located in the Natural History Survey Storage Building Number 3, 1833 S. Oak St., just north of Hazelwood Drive.

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