MIMIC Fair showcases student imagination, innovation

In the weeks leading up to Illinois Valley Community College’s annual MIMIC Fair on April 16, the computer-aided design lab is in perpetual motion. 3D printers hum. Prototypes are built, analyzed, adjusted, and modified again. Models shrink or grow as their designers huddle around computer screens critiquing and correcting.

Even more is happening behind the scenes, Program Coordinator Dorene Data observes as a pile of puzzle blocks scatter noisily behind her. She has noticed students playing with puzzles a lot.

Not playing, student Olivia Lund insists. The intention is purely business, and the product is being tested – thoroughly tested – for durability.

It is all part of IVCC’s lab-to-table project, the MIMIC Fair, which this year celebrates 30 years of showcasing products engineered and designed by computer-aided design students. The one-day fair will be set up from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the College cafeteria. It is open to the public and products are available for purchase.

The spring activity actually begins months earlier as students imagine products they can perfect, manufacture and sell. Over the years, the array of products has ranged from home decor and gadgets to leisure items or space- and time-savers. Products this year reflect the Gardening & Gaming theme.

Lund was working out kinks in one of the gardening projects: a tall sunflower-shaped lamp with a secret compartment to hold a door key. She had to decide how to fashion a flexible flower stem so it could still support a light, then finesse the screw-on lid of the secret compartment so it was sturdy but easy to tighten.

Adjustments are all part of the lesson. “They see the process. How does anything get made? You keep trying until it works,” Data said. If anything, Data has to keep them from getting too meticulous. “A lot of the designs are mechanical, and I remind them they also have to appeal to the public, to be esthetically pleasing or ergonomic.”

In addition to the indoor lamp-key safe and an outdoor key safe developed by Lund, the 2025 line-up of products includes a seed display rack and a seed starter tray designed by Maclane Rinearson, and a clamp to connect and extend bamboo plant stakes developed by Eli Keighin.

From the gaming side of things comes an IVCC-themed dice game developed by Mitch Wall, Rinearson’s 3D puzzle cube that comes complete with a puzzle-solver aid, and a building-block game with a twist developed by Tyler Graves and designed to challenge the most dexterous player. True to the fair’s alliterative theme, the students call it Genga.

Like students before him, Rinearson designed something that he would use.  “I am an outdoorsy person, and I like gardening. I have a whole lot of seeds at home in a Ziploc bag, and I wanted a stand where I could see them all.” After several models, he settled on a slanted rack that allows all the packets to be visible. From there, a separate seed-starter tray was a logical next step.

In partnering on projects, Rinearson and Keighin volleyed ideas back and forth. “I have the initial idea of how it should look, and Eli makes changes I didn’t know how to do. He knows how to go about improving a design,” Rinearson said.

Keighin says one of his skills is bringing ideas to paper so that they make sense to everyone.

The final products are starting to appear, and Data propels students toward the next key step: actively selling the product. “You created a product from your own idea, and now you have to get up and sell it. You will want to stand out,” she tells them.

MIMIC stands for Making Industry Meaningful In College, but the nickname stuck because the program mimics the real business world.

For information, contact Data at dorene_data@ivcc.edu.