An Emerging Impact from an Engineering Education Outreach Collaborative “Bridge” Program: Graduate Student Participation in Wheelchair Mobility Research for Mexico

Published in: Innovation in Engineering, Technology and Education for Competitiveness and Prosperity: Proceedings of the 11th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: August 14-16, 2013
Location of Conference: Cancun, Mexico
Authors: Renetta Tull
Hector Medina
Jonathan Pearlman
Mary Goldberg
Refereed Paper: #207

Abstract:

The Quality of Life Technology Center (QoLT) Engineering Research Center and PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) formed an engineering education outreach collaboration to provide a summer research bridge for graduate students. The research “bridge” connects underrepresented minority graduate students in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to the QoLT’s research projects and mentors at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. This paper provides, as a case for the type of research that students undertake, a specific quality of life project conducted by a QoLT/PROMISE Bridge participant in Mechanical Engineering. For this project, the researchers dealt with a problem of the American Wheelchair Mission (AWM): failure of donated wheelchairs. The objective of the project was to develop a pilot program to improve the lifetime of assistive devices. The 4R model: Recycle, Reuse, Repair, and Retrofit, was chosen to complement areas of wheelchair mobility in Mexico for children with disabilities. The paper also includes examples of outcomes of successful participants in the collaborative. These examples are followed by suggestions for developing a collaborative engineering education outreach that can broaden participation of students from diverse ethnic backgrounds.