Skyline College is the first community college in California to have a Base 11 innovation center, also known as a Fab Lab.

Skyline College recently partnered with the Base 11 Organization, which resulted in Skyline receiving a new lab and engineering entrepreneur program for students.

The Base 11 event is focused toward the goal of building a sustainable middle class by centering on the under privileged students including women, Hispanics and African Americans. Cherie Colin, Director of Marketing Communications and Public Relations, said Base 11 will be great for the economy by trying to build a stronger middle class.

“We recently underwent a partnership with Base 11,” Colin said. “It is an organization that is focused on really building on a middle class in America by encouraging students who are under resourced and underrepresented.”

The CEO of Base 11, Landon Taylor, gave a speech on what the program is and what it can offer to community college students, especially the highly competitive internships. The internships are meant to inspire.

“I want students to be able to learn and discover what their interests are,” Taylor said. “Ultimately our focus is to get them into the place they deserve.”

The programs offer community college students opportunities based on “entrepreneur accelerant” onto the “Victory Circle.” The “Victory Circle” is used as a destination for Base 11 students to be finished within 24 months or less by hitting one or more of the three goals: admitted to a four year university, hired for a high paid STEM job and/or launched their own based STEM enterprise. The goal overall, with the implemented innovation center, is to have 11,000 students into this “Victory Circle” by 2020.

One of the three flagship programs offered are the internships themselves.

There are 11 positions and four of them went to Skyline students Robert O’Leary, Ai Hnin OO, Daniel Powers and Alina Rai.

When the winning students were asked how they found out about Base 11, it was through their physics class and the original Base 11 presentations.

The lab features an MIT originated Fab Lab. It can make almost anything, like making a prototype and being able to launch it as a business. The lab features a 16 week curriculum that will teach students how to take a young aspiring entrepreneur’s ideas and commercialize them.

The internships are located at USC, the Smithsonian Museum of the National Air Space program and Cal Tech.

The lab is located in Building 7, second floor. The lab is open for use by Skyline students.

The course on the engineering entrepreneur ship will start on Sept. 15, 2016.

Dr. Regina Stanback Stroud, one of the leaders in these partnerships, said in her speech and as a personal statement, that under privileged students (especially those in community colleges like Skyline) need to be served.

“We have an unbelievable opportunity here,” Stroud said. “It takes us paying attention at being attention and deliberate to make sure people have these access to these types of opportunities.”