Friendships, professional connections and lifelong memories make the Maintenance Shop Iowa State University’s hidden treasure for students with an interest in entertainment.

The Maintenance Shop is a 43-year-old music venue inside Iowa State’s Memorial Union that has seen an array of students and events. Since 1974 the M-Shop, as it is affectionately referred to, has offered a space for students to express themselves and cultivate relationships.

Students who find a place in the M-Shop have the opportunity to find friends, take advantage of professional connections and make lifelong memories. These experiences continue to impact alumni in their professional, post-graduation lives.

Students find the M-Shop in different ways. No matter how they stumble across it, it has both an immediate and lasting impression.

One of the positions that keeps the venue running is the student M-Shop director, a position that is currently being filled by Angela Chamberlain. She got her first look at the venue when she made the decision to help with a show.

“The second I walked down the ramp… it was just a really inviting spot and it made me feel so welcome that I wanted to do it again,” Chamberlain said. “I hadn’t even started my first show and I wanted to come back for more. I thought this was a spot where I could be myself.”

For others, the first thing that strikes them is the history that the M-Shop holds within its walls.

“That room’s just got so much history,” said Bryan Scheckel, an Iowa State University alumni. “When you walk in you see the photos on the back wall, pictures of all these legendary artists who have performed in there.”

Those legendary artists have left something behind for future students to find.

“It clearly has a very historic and old school soul that’s there,” said Andrew Lopez, another alumni. “You know that previous people have left their footprint there.”

The first impression may be what draws students into the M-Shop, but it is what they find there that makes them want to stay. What they find is a home and a place that they can make their own.

“My best friends, my roommates were the other M-Shop directors,” Lopez said. “We were all best friends so we kind of made that place our own.”

It’s a place where students can be comfortable in a space that they created.

“It was a place where I immediately, when I walked in after I saw one show there, thought, ‘Yeah this is where I want to be’,” said George Potter, a former Maintenance Shop director.

When the M-Shop becomes a home to students, it also becomes a place where they advance themselves on whatever career path they choose.

“I think that’s what the M-Shop is all about, finding a path and taking advantage of it,” Lopez said.

The M-Shop also offers opportunities to take advantage of the people in the entertainment industry who pass through.

“The Maintenance Shop was the avenue for me meeting various people and being able to interview for internships and really finding my place,” Potter said.

As they travel down their chosen path, the M-Shop teaches them just as much as any class on campus.

“I really think of the M-shop as a classroom just because I spent so much time learning there,” Potter said. “It really gave us the freedom to learn, fail and get better over time.”

The M-Shop is not only a place that influences a student’s experience at Iowa State, it stays with them for years after they graduate. Jim Brockpahler, SUB’s Entertainment Programs Coordinator, works with the students in the M-Shop and keeps in touch with some of them as they move on from the venue.

“I have students who have graduated telling me ‘I owe everything to the M-Shop’,” Brockpahler said. “The M-Shop really means something to them. It’s something they’ll always remember and be proud of.”

Attending M-Shop shows has a certain effect on students who frequently go to shows and work to put them on.

Brockpahler said because the stage is designed so that the audience surrounds the performers on three sides, the M-Shop is a, “Unique intimate experience to see any type of show.”

“I don’t know what the magic there is, but I think it’s the overall experience, the relationships, the space itself,” Brockpahler said.

That intimacy combined with the directors’ ability to book up-and-coming bands means that attending an M-Shop show can put attendees close to someone who will be a bigger star in the future.

“Iowa State has this hidden secret where you have the opportunity to go see these bands and comedians and performers with like 60 people there and you’re standing right next to someone who’s going to win a Grammy or be in a Will Ferrell movie,” Lopez said.

The idea of the M-Shop being a hidden treasure is supported by other students as well.

“I wish more students would graduate and know about the M-Shop and all the things that it does and how it changes people,” Chamberlain said.

The M-Shop is a small-room venue that has a big impact on current and former students at Iowa State University and embodies what the school is all about.

“The Iowa State mantra, ‘find your adventure,’ completely applies to my experience with the M-Shop and finding a whole career out of it and really taking it to the next level,” Potter said.