The Student Design and Experiential Learning Center (SDELC) was established in 2000 to better support S&T's various multi-disciplinary student design teams. In 2004 the center's mission expanded to provide experiential learning in academic courses, identify and support student service learning projects within the curriculum, and support ad-hoc student teams in specialty academic events involving multi-disciplinary student research.

     By 2006 the SDELC expanded to ten student design teams, twelve by late 2011, and the thirteenth team in April, 2012.  In early 2011 the SDELC moved to the gleaming new Kummer Student Design Center, which provides students with expanded and improved design and fabrication areas along with co-located administrative support assets.  The SDELC currently provides academic credit opportunities consisting of three, one-hour design, leadership, and communication classes. The center also offers an experiential design course through the Residential College (RC) program.

     The SDELC's student design teams, research teams, special projects and academic courses are the foundation of experiential learning at Missouri S&T.