STORY: Generous Gift Enables Expansion of Olin’s Wood Shop
The Cernosia Family Wood Shop, scheduled to open in September, will expand the size, equipment and campus access of Olin’s woodworking space.
Students Jeremy Wenger ’24 and Gigi Mancuso-Jackson ’24 work with wood in the Miller Academic Center (MAC). Photo by Tom Kates.
Over the summer, Olin’s wood shop will expand significantly thanks to a generous gift from the Cernosia family in honor of Tom Cernosia, a lifelong woodworker with a passion for clockmaking.
The Cernosia Family Wood Shop will feature a move to a larger space in the Miller Academic Center and a broad upgrade in resources and equipment for students and the community.
When Prescille Cernosia first joined the Olin community in 2024 as Director of Major Gifts, she brought her husband Charlie on a tour of campus. His father, Tom Cernosia, has spent his life working with wood and making clocks. Charlie, thrilled to see Olin students in the shop and, along with his family, was inspired to support the expansion of Olin’s wood shop in Tom's honor.
“A gift to Olin’s woodworking shop is an investment in craftsmanship, creativity and hands-on learning that shapes not just projects but futures,” said Christine Cernosia, on behalf of her family. “This gift is a way for the Cernosia family to show their support to Olin’s vision of developing the next generation of engineering innovators.”
Highlights of the new shop include a 271% increase in usable space (an addition of 889 square feet) and five times as many workbenches—providing more room for students to work and collaborate. It features professional-grade equipment, including a joiner, planer, thickness sander, second table saw, bigger lathe, additional ShopBot CNC router and improved dust collection for cleaner and safer operations. These upgrades allow students to tackle larger and more complex projects, including the ability to work with rough-cut lumber at Olin for the first time.
With its new home in MAC 113, the Cernosia Family Wood Shop joins a more integrated suite of fabrication spaces. This move also brings expanded hours, closer proximity to staff, and a cross-trained team of shop assistants, ensuring students have access to skilled support during evenings and weekends.
Jeremy Wenger ’24 cuts a piece of wood on a table saw machine. Photo by Tom Kates.
A saying that Dyllan Nguyen, senior fabrication specialist & instructor, holds close in his role is “in making things we make ourselves.” He explains, “Making and using tools are species-defining activities for humans. The shops at Olin are spaces where our community can embrace this idea while building and exercising their technical and creative skills. One of the features I appreciate about Olin is the intentional value placed on arts and humanities in the curriculum, teaching our students to be whole people who can apply an engineering mindset in many ways as well as to think about the implications of the work they do.”
While working to build out the new space, Olin’s Summer 2025 Shop fellows have gotten to dig into the nuances of shop design. The fellows and Shop staff visited several local wood shops to gather information about tool stations, storage strategies and how each space meets the unique needs of their users. They also had the opportunity to practice welding, metalworking and machining to create custom parts and furniture for the space, and to learn to use a range of other tools to get the space ready.
Looking ahead, updated trainings will reflect the shop’s expanded capabilities, and the Shop staff is developing new opportunities for curricular integration.
The Cernosia Family Wood Shop is scheduled to be completed and open to the community in September 2025.