Coding for a cause: Tech students launch website for healthcare nonprofit
During their final semester at Tennessee Tech, three computer science students turned their skills into a tool for community impact.
It wasn’t a class project.
No grade was given. No academic credit was earned.
But as far as nonprofit founder Noah Doerflinger is concerned, the student volunteers – Thomas Robertson II, Gavin Walker and Aidan Gillespie – scored an A+ for the new website they designed for the Bridge of Aspirations Foundation, where he serves as CEO and interim board president.
“They built a website that helps visitors better understand our core mission and values,” Doerflinger said. “They’ve done a great job, and I’m thankful for their support and dedication to our cause.”
The foundation, founded by Doerflinger in February 2025, was inspired by the legacy of his mother, Christi Doerflinger, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a 2001 car accident that left her paralyzed. She died in 2023. The organization is dedicated to advancing healthcare equity through mobile medical outreach and rehabilitation for people with neurological and spinal trauma.
The website states: “We bring mobile care to underserved communities and provide world-class inpatient recovery – restoring lives with compassion, dignity and purpose.”
Bridge of Aspirations also provides scholarships and resources for nursing students and works to expand healthcare access to underserved populations through partnerships, including CommonGround Mobile Health Collective, which Doerflinger had worked with healthcare executives to implement shortly after founding the Bridge of Aspirations Foundation.
Robertson described the website as a “passion project” that gave the student team real-world experience in client communication, project structuring, cloud deployment and full-stack web development.
“We wanted to help support medical care in underserved communities while also gaining experience outside of our classes,” he said. “We learned a lot through this project and are grateful for the chance to work with Noah.”
Robertson served as project manager and back-end developer, overseeing client communication and requirements, project infrastructure, hosting solutions and deployment.
Walker was the lead front-end developer, designing and implementing the public-facing portions of the website to reflect the foundation’s vision. Gillespie worked as the lead back-end developer, focusing on server infrastructure, DevOps, deployment and migration to the client’s hosting platform.
“By helping to bring the foundation’s vision online with donation tools, outreach capabilities and storytelling, we were able to strengthen both our technical and professional skills while contributing to a cause dedicated to equity, compassion and hope,” Robertson said.
Looking ahead, the Bridge of Aspirations Foundation plans to build a neurological and spinal rehabilitation hospital named in honor of its inspiration. The Christi Doerflinger Memorial Hospital is planned to become the nation’s third independent facility of its kind.
Doerflinger, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration at Tennessee Tech, states on the website: “I’ve made it my mission to ensure that fewer families go through the same challenges my mom and our family faced. Her legacy will live on in the love, kindness and resilience she taught us all.”
Visit the website: bridgeofaspirations.org.