Aleef Rahman stood in front of a group of students and introduced himself by asking, “Anybody ever build a robot?”

Rahman, a resident assistant from Irving College in Mendelsohn Quad, held a Build-a-Robot program on Monday night, designed to teach residents about the components and functions of simple robots.

Residents gathered around an assembly line-like table in the dormitory’s main lounge and built hand-sized robots from materials like soda cans, metal wires and batteries.

Rahman explained how the electricity flowed in a ready-made robot, a specific model called the “beetle-bot,” during his crash course in robotics.

“Mendelsohn’s theme is Information Technology Studies,” Rahman said. “A lot of the students are focused on engineering, information sciences, computer science. Their classes involve learning about circuits and building things, so I thought it would be fun to have a program about simple robots: Robots 101.”

The Undergraduate College of Information Technology Studies is, according to the Stony Brook University web site, “designed for students interested in the growing areas of technology development.” Their mission statement expresses that the undergraduate college “seeks to infuse students with a sense of wonder as they discover the power of information and technology and consider their own role in shaping the future.” At the end of the night, the students who attended got to take their beetle-bots home, as a souvenir of a program that combined technology with creativity.