Second Annual M5 Telethon
Bob Jeffway, CSE ‘77; Jenny Tang, EE ‘28; Alex Reineke, EE ‘27
Second Annual M5 Telethon
Saturday, April 25th, 2026
9 AM - 5 PM EDT
Live-streamed on YouTube
M5 is the ECE makerspace and it is here for all ECE students - seven days per week! Please give online and then call M5 during the telethon to let the ECE students know that you gave! Links below!
Please follow these steps :)
Step 1 - Please make your gift online in any amount:
https://minutefund.uma-foundation.org/project/46478
Thank you!
Step 2 - Then tune into the live broadcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/ViGbQ_pP5Qs
(Saturday, April 25th, 2026, 9 AM - 5 PM EDT)
Step 3 - Then call M5 at +1 (413) 248-6821 to let the fabulous ECE students standing by on the phone bank know that you have put your support behind their unique makerspace!
Your support will enable us to offer students more project grants, more training opportunities, more electronic components, more external professional fabrication of printed circuit boards (PCBs), more custom integrated circuit (IC) fabrication (via Tiny Tapeout), more test equipment, more staff support and a more welcoming community environment.
This eight-hour telethon will feature:
• Live maker demos at the Circuits & Code project showcase
• Guest appearances by retired department head Dr. Christopher Hollot, current department head Dr. Russell Tessier and various distinguished alumni.
• Real rotary phones and a student-built telephone system
• Live donor shoutouts and engagement in the livestream chat
M5 serves all ECE students with a 5,000 sq. ft. facility, test equipment, a machine shop, thousands of electronic and mechanical components and most importantly, a very helpful staff of undergraduate engineering interns who help their classmates enhance their ECE education through hands-on projects.
What will your gift enable? To give you an idea...
1 Your support will fund more project grants for independent individual and group projects.
2 Your support will enable us to offer more real-world application- and design-oriented workshops and courses at M5.
3 Your support will enable M5 members to continue building out a set of permanent open-source on-site demos. These boards and systems will be available seven days per week for their classmates to explore and learn more about technologies such as Internet Protocol, PoE (Power over Ethernet), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, feedback control, analog and digital TV, AM radio, FM radio, telegraphy, analog telephony, VoIP telephony, telex, teletext, PCIe, Apple2 expansion bus (with the groundbreaking 6502 microprocessor), Linux on a Raspberry Pi 5, C on an ARM processor, RISC-V MCUs, Arduino computing, DMX512 lighting, RS-232, RS-485, SPI and I2C serial interfaces, MIDI music interface, USB Type-C, PWM motor speed control, and more.
We know that M5 was the deciding factor for some of our students. With your support, that can be true for even more students.
Again, thank you for your willingness to support M5, the ECE makerspace at UMass Amherst!
CMOS chips and palm trees,
Baird for all of the M5 staff and members
Baird Soules
Sr. Lecturer
Director of Experiential Learning
Founding Faculty Director of M5, the ECE Makerspace
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Left to right, Edmar Gonçalves and Baird Soules
