The LSU Community Playground Project wants to improve Baton Rouge schools, one playground at a time.
Biological and agricultural engineering professor Marybeth Lima started the project in 1998 as part of the curriculum for her biological engineering design course. Students enrolled in Lima’s BE 1252 class, which she teaches every spring, collaborate with local public schools to design and build playgrounds.
“We identify the soul of the community, whether it’s diversity or competition, and then we design a playground based on that,” said biological engineering senior Alexandra Williams.
Lima said because she teaches a first-year design course, she wanted her students’ first design experience to be interesting and familiar to them. Lima said biological engineering students have a range of interests, from medical to environmental, but playgrounds have a universal appeal.
Each semester, Lima’s classes break into groups. Each group is assigned to a specific school and creates its own playground design for the school.
At the end of the semester, they consolidate the designs and incorporate the best elements into a final design based on the school’s wants and needs, Lima said. She and her students then help acquire the funding to build the playground and participate in the building process.
The students serve as the project’s facilitators, but the true designers are the children, Lima said.
“The kids at the school, really, they’re the ones who play                                                                                      every day, and they’re the experts at play, so we work with them to figure out what their creative vision is for the playground and try to turn that into a feasible playground design,” Lima said.
She said her students create not just for communities, but with communities, as each community is unique. The design process requires students to listen and respond to the children’s creative vision.
“When you go ask them what’s their favorite part of the playground or what would they like to see, they get so excited,” Williams said. “If you bring a poster, they get to write and draw exactly what they like, and then so in the playground, when they see the final design is done, they like to say, ‘Oh, I picked that,’ or, ‘Oh, that was my idea.’”
Biological engineering senior Kristen Galloway spoke to students about what they want to see on their playground as she tutored them, asking them questions as she worked with them.
“It’s kind of interesting to see where their imagination takes them when you ask them what would you like to do with the playground, what would you want on it,” Galloway said. “It kind of lets me see how imaginative kids are, so I really enjoyed that.”
By participating in the project, Lima said students are able to learn and apply the basics of engineering design within a community. Students gain valuable problem-solving experience by understanding how to respect the community’s creative vision while following safety standards.
Students are often faced with difficult decisions when children want a particular piece of equipment, but adults see the equipment as a safety hazard, Lima said.
“Practicing engineers make those decisions all the time, and I want my students to have those experiences early on,” Lima said. “How do you respect every single person in the process and make the best decisions that you can when those decisions are not always clear-cut or easy?”
Lima and her students have completed 29 playgrounds since the start of the project. She said their designs also include a couple of playgrounds built for children affected by Hurricane Katrina and children with special needs.
All playgrounds must be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but sometimes further design alterations are made when the playground is intended for a specific group of children, Lima said.
She and her students created a playground for students who were visually impaired. They created panels with braille lettering alongside visual lettering so that all children would be able to connect and make use of the equipment.
“Whether a child has disabilities or not, they’re going to have a vision for play, so you just want to carry that vision through. But sometimes there are technical considerations that are special,” Lima said. “You just want to try to open up spaces where people can connect.”
Lima said many students involved in the project study biological engineering, but enrollment in her class is not limited to those students. After taking Lima’s class, students who excel and show an interest in the project are invited to become part of the playground research and design team and serve as project managers.