Engineering club makes impact on one person’s worklife |
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Written by MICHAEL DRIEHORST, Special to the Chronicle
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Friday, 03 April 2009 01:00 |
TOLEDO—A St. Ursula Academy (SUA) engineering club was one of five U.S. high school teams to advance to the finals of the Feb. 26 Junior Engineering Technical Society’s (JETS) AbilityOne National Engineering Design Challenge in Washington D.C.
However, more important than that accomplishment is how the team made a real difference in David Hartman’s work.
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| St. Ursula Academy JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society) club
member Brennan Brown adjusts the weight mechanism on the Lift-A-Tray
device, which the club entered in the JETS AbilityOne National
Engineering Design Challenge. The Lift-A-Tray can be adjusted depending
on the weight of the files so it’s easy to pull the device up and down.
(Chronicle photo by Michael Driehorst) |
Mr. Hartman has progressive muscular dystrophy, and works as a vocational specialist at Harbor Career Connections in Toledo. The seven-member St. Ursula Academy JETS club designed and built a Lift-A-Tray adaptive filing system to assist Mr. Hartman in his office.
"I’m known to have piles of papers all over my office," says Mr. Hartman, who uses a wheelchair and has a "very small office" with no filing cabinet. "It’s been really helpful for me to have the Lift-A-Tray, and I’ve missed it since the team had to take it to the competition."
While the SUA team didn’t come home with the top prize at the JETS challenge, it did earn the Peer Award, which was voted by members of the five finalist teams. It also was the first all-girls team to compete in the JETS challenge finals.
SUA Science Department Chair Jackie Kane is the club’s moderator. The SUA JETS Club consists of Brennan Brown, Emily DeDonato, Gabrielle Geiger, Madeline Meads, Sydney Murphy, Hannah Renzhofer and Elizabeth Wentz.
In August, the SUA JETS club, which has existed at the school for more than 12 years, was introduced to Mr. Hartman, whose daughter graduated from SUA. After talking with him several times, brainstorming and designing various options, they decided on a design that eventually became the Lift-A-Tray.
The Lift-A-Tray is an adaptive filing system that is movable and accessible for people who have limited range of motion and fine motor control. Team members met before and after school and weekends from August through the finals competition, to develop the device. To advance to the finals, the team was judged on a six-minute video they produced about their project. Another student, Liz Truman, assisted in editing the video, which can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=78dxIGC9XvQ.
"The girls gave many, many hours after school and on the weekends building the Lift-A-Tray, getting materials, meeting with Mr. Hartman and many other activities," Ms. Kane says.
"It’s nice to be able to make a device for someone with a disability in our community. It’ll help him now to have an easier time in his workplace," Emily says. "The project helped me realize that engineers work with people moreso than I thought."
Sydney adds, "We [team members] never had any classes together before. We spent so much time together that we got to really know each other."
During the competition finals, the five teams participated in an ice breaker/team-building exercise: building prosthetic hands that will actually be used.
"We not only built relationships with each other as a team, but we built relationships with others from around the country," says Elizabeth.
The JETS AbilityOne National Engineering Design Challenge is an annual engineering design competition for high school students who are given the task of designing and building an assistive technology device to help a person with severe disabilities succeed in his or her workplace.
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To learn more about JETS, visit www.jets.org.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 04 June 2009 09:09 |
