New chairs confound Chapman STEM students

A piece of furniture in the new Swenson Family Hall of Engineering has caused furrowed eyebrows among Chapman students. TIFFANY LE, Staff Photographer

Here’s a joke for you: a Chapman engineering student and an ergonomically-advanced chair walk into a bar. The student requires a spot to sit after a relentless day of learning code and brainstorming innovative, technological advancements. They glance at the chair and ask, “Mind if I utilize your services?”

The mischievous chair replies with a sarcastic grin, “Go ahead and try, but there’s no chance in hell you’ll figure it out.”

Now, to the students majoring in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) in the Fowler School of Engineering, that was some hysterical, knee-slapping content. But, to the other 90% of the Chapman community, that made less sense than asking a computer science major to explain their last homework assignment. 

So, why would a chair cause so much commotion? One would assume taking a seat would be an instinctual habit ingrained in our core memories, ever since we sat our butts in a car seat as toddlers, but the latest chairs installed into the School of Engineering have evoked discord and utter baby-brain among students. And if these future inventors and brainiac trailblazers cannot figure it out, there must be a problem.   

Descriptions of these chairs are few and far between, with some paralleling the appearance to a flower with a stem for a base that sways in the breeze. Others say it is a pogostick with a life of its own. Metaphors aside, the chair is a lab stool adorned with a cushion on top and a base that requires the user to sit at an angle for optimal support. 

Senior computer science major Joey Sheridan was introduced to these chairs just last week in the Swenson Family Hall of Engineering, the newly constructed wing of the Keck Center for Science and Engineering. Sheridan said he had a wobbly start adapting to the chair at first, but he soon noticed his peers were experiencing the same conundrum.  

“When I actually sat down in the chair, it was kind of confusing at first with how it was supposed to work,” Sheridan said. “People are going to crazy lengths to get around these stools. I was seeing people trying to get configured and sitting in them backwards. I was sitting in them backwards for at least half of my first day, and I felt like I was going to fall out of the chair the whole time.”

Although the chair promises better posture and ergonomic support, Sheridan said the poor design of the chair inhibits the student from reaping the benefits, instead causing a crick in the neck. 

“When you give an average person an iPhone and they need to make a phone call, the average person will be able to figure that out,” Sheridan said. “I’d hoped that the chair I am sitting in is equally as simple for me to figure out — but it wasn’t. You need to (get) the inside scoop on how they work to sit in them comfortably, but that information wasn’t immediately accessible to everybody.” 

The dreaded seats. TIFFANY LE, Staff Photographer

Another student who can testify that these chairs are actually as confusing as coding is senior computer science major Titan Mitchell. Upon sitting in one of the chairs, Mitchell became overwhelmed with the amount of stress he had to put on not only his core, but also his back from twisting one way to the next.

Mitchell posted his formal complaint in the engineering major’s Slack chatroom, saying his spine was pleading for help. 

“It’s a pretty niche audience that also understands my struggles,” Mitchell said. “It’s a community, and everyone understands what you post there. You can make a joke about it, because we have a very supportive staff, and they also understand whatever we are trying to go up against. We are still (living) in a meme culture, so we share something with light-heartedness.”

After Mitchell’s comment, Andrew Lyon, the Dean of the Fowler School of Engineering, replied with the manual for this chair in order for students to optimize their use of the furniture they encounter in class each day. Lyon’s light-hearted relationship with students made his reply sound like the butt end of the joke, but in reality Lyon said his goal was to help students understand that this chair is, indeed, one tough cookie. 

“It is a non-traditional seating arrangement, and I wanted to make sure students recognized there were worse do’s and don’t with using that furniture,” Lyon said. “I try to be super accessible to students and these kinds of events show a lot of the newer students that I am not hiding from them. If they have issues they want to discuss, we are really open to discussing those things, even if they are as apparently small as not knowing how to sit in a chair properly.” 

He also shared the manual with students so they understand the practical reasoning behind these chairs, which was to break the mold from most labs and provide wheelchair accessibility in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.

“It turns out most laboratory furniture manufacturers don’t make lab stools that are the right height for ADA access,” Lyon said. “We had to get a height-adjustable stool that would meet a lot of different types of seating conditions, so that students could work comfortably at these lower benches that are appropriate for use if you are in a wheelchair. That was a main functional reason for sharing it — so they could see how to adjust the height appropriately, because if you can’t do that, you are doomed.”

Overall, is a chair going to make or break a college experience? Not exactly. But, the ability for something so miniscule to become a long-running joke that connects STEM majors for years to come is why Lyon is pleased with this result. 

“Swenson Hall is incredibly technologically advanced, and apparently, that even goes down to the furniture in the building,” Lyon said.

Disclaimer: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Andrew Lyon was the dean of the Fowler School of Law, not Engineering.