Donor family establishes humanities makerspace at WSU
Carol, Katie and Chrissy Lanning pose outside the new Robert L. Cattoi Book Technologies Lab, a humanities makerspace dedicated to creating and appreciating the book as a physical object.
A traditional humanities education has long consisted of reading the text, writing about the text and discussing the text. Now, thanks to the generosity of Robert L. Cattoi’s family, students in the humanities at Wichita State have a makerspace to create the text for themselves.
This makerspace, the Robert L. Cattoi Book Technologies Lab, is the brainchild of Fran Connor and Katie Lanning, associate professors of English, both of whom are book historians and co-directors to the lab. Although located on the sixth floor of Lindquist Hall, home to Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the space is a resource available to students across every discipline at Wichita State. It will also serve as the physical foundation for the English department’s new Text Technologies minor.
The Book Technologies Lab pays homage to Robert Cattoi, Katie’s late grandfather, and his lifelong dedication to improving and facilitating human communication. During WWII, while stationed in Brownsville, Texas, as a member of the Army Air Corps, Cattoi and his team were tasked with rescuing three submarine-hunting B-17s lost at sea. Triangulating an increasingly faint signal and transmitting guidance to shore, their efforts saved the lives of all three aircrafts’ crews.
“I think about that story all the time, because I think it tells you everything about how my grandfather saw his work: that communication could save lives, and that every signal mattered, no matter how weak,” Katie, who also serves as vice president of the Robert L. and Mary Frances Cattoi Family Foundation, says. “When I think about it that way, I see how deeply this work required a particular kind of care for people, for the messages we send to each other and for the technologies that allow those messages to persist and endure.”
The new lab houses many such technologies—from quill pens and wax tablets to letterpresses, bookbinders, 3-D printers and much more—each serving to deepen students’ appreciation for the book as a physical object. “This lab provides the space, skills, materials and expertise for students to understand and appreciate the physical book,” Fran says. “Experiencing these technologies firsthand, they come to understand that every book is a collaborative object.”
Equally collaborative were the efforts to establish the lab, which was realized through a donation from Cattoi’s family. “I’ve taught elementary students for 42 years,” says Carol Lanning, former member of the foundation and Robert’s daughter. “Getting to engage them in their learning, watching them develop open-mindedness and empathy: I consider that my life’s work. Now, being able to support that mission for students in higher education while honoring my dad—that’s everything to me.”
Robert passed away in 2022 at the age of 95. Chrissy Lanning, president-elect of the foundation and Robert’s granddaughter, says that, although he was an engineer by trade, Robert would have been first in line to the Book Technologies Lab. “He was the first one in our family to get an iPad and a smartphone; in fact, he knew how to use all that stuff before I did,” she says, smiling. “He would have loved this hands-on approach in encountering new technologies.”
The Cattoi and Lanning family created the lab—literally. The Lannings spent their summer hanging up pictures and moving in equipment, no small feat for Chrissy and Carol, who live in Dallas. The Cattoi Family Foundation also ensured the continued success of the space with an endowed scholarship to support the lab’s student docents and students minoring in Text Technologies.
Sarah Beth Estes, dean of Fairmount College, is thrilled to see how future students utilize and maximize the lab as a resource. “Here, they’ll gain not only technical skills, but also a deeper sense of how human creativity and innovation are, and have always been intertwined,” Estes says. “This is a space for inquiry, where students can get their hands on the history of communication and experiment with what comes next.”
As for what comes next, that’s a question that can only be answered by the many students who will visit the lab, free to inquire, explore, create and become more.
