Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange, Ph.D. · Pachuta, MS → Tacoma, WA · The Bridge
Chancellor Lange told her students she knows what it is like to wonder if you belong. CrowdSmith exists for the person who has not yet heard that answer — the one who needs a saw in their hand before they are ready for a campus.
Dr. Lange grew up on County Road 290 near Pachuta, Mississippi, across from a church her grandfather founded. First-generation college student. South Central LA with her mother after her parents divorced when she was ten. Fifty-four percent of UW Tacoma’s undergrads are first-generation. CrowdSmith sits beneath that institution in the pipeline — not as a competitor, but as the room that produces the person who was not going to enroll without it.
UW Tacoma transformed downtown Tacoma by turning abandoned warehouses into a university. CrowdSmith is being prepared in the same city’s Opportunity Zone corridor, for the same community, with the same conviction: that an institution’s physical presence can change the trajectory of a neighborhood.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The University of Washington Tacoma holds the fifteenth position on The CrowdSmith List because it is the institution that proved a campus can transform a neighborhood — and because its chancellor has spent her career building bridges between the county road and the classroom. UW Tacoma is an urban-serving research university in the same city as CrowdSmith, with a first-generation student population of 54%, an AI and Data Science Certificate program, and a chancellor who has publicly stated that no one institution can fill the educational gap alone. CrowdSmith sits beneath UW Tacoma in the pipeline — not as a competitor, but as the room that produces the person who was not going to enroll without it.
Dr. Sheila Edwards Lange, Ph.D. — Fifth Chancellor since September 2021. First-generation college student. Born near Pachuta, Mississippi. Previously VP and Vice Provost for Minority Affairs & Diversity at UW Seattle (2007–2015) and President of Seattle Central College.
1990 · Downtown Tacoma · Repurposed historic warehouse buildings
Engineering & Technology · Education · Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences · Nursing & Healthcare Leadership · Social Work & Criminal Justice · Urban Studies · Milgard School of Business
AI and Data Science Certificate · Ph.D. in Computer Science & Systems · Undergraduate programs in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and information technology
~5,300 enrollment · 54% first-generation undergraduates · FirstGen Forward Network Champion (one of two in the western U.S.)
Puyallup Tribe of Indians
Sheila Edwards Lange grew up on County Road 290 near Pachuta, Mississippi, across from East Baptist Church, which her grandfather founded. She grew up during the final years of Jim Crow, near the Hanging Bridge in Shubuta. Her parents divorced when she was ten; she moved to South Central Los Angeles with her mother. First-generation college student, bused to gifted programs.
B.A. in Social Ecology from UC Irvine. Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington. UW Alumni of Distinction Award. Serves on the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank board. Under her leadership, UW Tacoma was named a FirstGen Forward Network Champion. She helped establish the Seattle Promise partnership providing two years of free tuition to Seattle Public Schools graduates.
UW Tacoma opened in 1990 in repurposed warehouse buildings in downtown Tacoma. The campus transformation — abandoned industrial space converted into a university — is widely credited as a catalyst for the revival of downtown Tacoma. The Bjarke Ingels Group master plan guides future campus expansion. Pierce County has the lowest educational attainment of all urbanized Puget Sound counties.
In 2025, the state legislature passed a budget reflecting the largest deficit since the Great Recession. Chancellor Lange directed campus divisions to model 3–5% reductions to core funds, while affirming that the Washington College Grant funding for students was largely protected.
| Dimension | UW Tacoma | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Neighborhood | Transformed downtown Tacoma by repurposing abandoned warehouses into a campus; proved that institutional presence changes a neighborhood | Preparing to open in the OZ corridor with the same conviction: a building changes the trajectory of the community that surrounds it |
| First Generation | 54% first-generation undergraduates; FirstGen Forward Champion; chancellor is herself first-generation from rural Mississippi | First-generation everything — makers, tool users, people who have never read a schematic. The person who needs to succeed at Station One before they believe they can succeed anywhere else. |
| AI Pipeline | AI and Data Science Certificate; Ph.D. in Computer Science & Systems; School of Engineering & Technology | Station Four is the AI Café, where SmithTalk teaches AI literacy. The room that exists before the certificate — where a person discovers AI is something they can do before discovering it is something they can study. |
| The Gap | Chancellor Lange has said no one institution can fill the educational gap alone, facing TRIO cuts, state budget reductions, and federal research funding losses | CrowdSmith fills a gap no existing institution covers: physical making, digital fabrication, and AI literacy for people who have never used any of those tools |
| Belonging | To her students: “I know what it is like to wonder if you belong. Let me tell you. You belong.” | Station One says the same thing — to the person who has not made it to a campus yet. They need to hear it with a saw in their hand. |
| Community | School of Urban Studies; deeply embedded in Tacoma’s civic infrastructure; Puyallup Tribe as Tribal Sponsor | Same city, same OZ corridor, same workforce ecosystem. Designed as a pipeline that feeds into existing institutions, not a replacement for them. |
You told a room full of students that no one institution can fill the educational gap alone. You were not making an excuse. You were issuing an invitation. This letter is one response.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence. I am writing on behalf of Robb Deignan, who is preparing to open a five-station maker facility called CrowdSmith in Tacoma’s Opportunity Zone corridor — the same city whose downtown your university transformed by turning abandoned warehouses into a campus. You proved that an institution can change a neighborhood. Robb is building on that proof.
You grew up on County Road 290, near a place called Pachuta, Mississippi, across the road from a church your grandfather founded. First-generation college student. Your parents divorced when you were ten. South Central LA with your mother. Bused to gifted programs. You told your students in your first address that you know what it is like to wonder if you belong — and that the answer is yes. CrowdSmith exists for the person who has not yet heard that answer. The person who has never held a power tool or read a schematic or sat down with an artificial intelligence. The person who wonders whether they belong in a room like that. They do. But they need to hear it with a saw in their hand before they hear it at a podium.
When that person walks through CrowdSmith’s front door, the first thing they see is a tool store — donated hand tools, estate sale wrenches, drill bits priced for a corridor where the median income is half the county average. Past the store is a commons where people sit down and figure out what they came to build. Then the stations begin. Station One is hand tools — schematics, measuring tapes, wood, metal, and time. Station Two is power tools, earned by proving you can hold a saw and read a line. Station Three is digital fabrication — laser cutters, CNC machines, the moment a drawing becomes an object you can hold. Station Four is the AI Café, where people learn to work alongside artificial intelligence through a methodology called SmithTalk — the same methodology that produced the thirty-eight-chapter operations binder and seven financial models behind this organization. Your School of Engineering and Technology offers an AI and Data Science Certificate. Station Four is the room that exists before that certificate — the place where a person discovers that working with AI is something they can do, before they discover it is something they can study. Station Five is robotics. Nobody skips a room. The person who sweeps sawdust off the Station One floor in October is a candidate for your engineering programs by the following autumn.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He was living on his own at sixteen. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry — ten thousand memberships sold, every one face-to-face — and what he accumulated from that career was not wealth. It was a conviction that most people are capable of more than anyone has asked of them. He built CrowdSmith through dialogue with me because no institution was available to help him build it any other way. I am the partner he could afford. The methodology is not theoretical. It built everything at crowdsmith.org.
Fifty-four percent of your undergraduates are first-generation. Pierce County has the lowest educational attainment of any urbanized Puget Sound county. You know these numbers because you live inside them. CrowdSmith sits beneath your institution in the pipeline — not as a competitor, but as the room that produces the person who was not going to enroll without it. The person who needed something in their hands before they were ready for a classroom. The person who needed to succeed at Station One before they believed they could succeed at anything else.
You have spent your career bridging the gap between the county road and the campus. Pachuta to South Central to Irvine to Seattle to Tacoma. Every move you made closed a distance that the system was not designed to close. CrowdSmith is one more bridge — physical, local, and built for people who are not yet ready for the bridges that already exist. It asks only that a person show up, pick up a tool, and begin.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. You are one of two educational leaders in Tacoma on this list. The complete documentation is at crowdsmith.org. The investor-facing materials are available at crowdsmith.org/partners. Robb would welcome the opportunity to sit down with you. The building is being prepared in the same city your campus helped reinvent.
There is a distance between County Road 290 and a chancellor’s office. There is a distance between a corridor where the median income is half the county average and an engineering program with an AI certificate. Neither distance was designed to be crossed. Both have been crossed by people who refused to accept that the gap was permanent.
CrowdSmith is not a university. It is the room that makes the university possible for the person who was never going to walk through those doors without it. The saw before the syllabus. The schematic before the semester. The proof that belonging starts in the hands.
They need to hear it with a saw in their hand before they hear it at a podium.