College of Engineering
Tech engineering students provide special needs children life enhancing products
Jacob Nelson said it best.
“In this project, it’s hard to find anything bad in it,” said Nelson, a senior mechanical engineering major from Hendersonville. “We get education. We get experience. A family gets the benefit from that. Coming in, installing it, seeing that it works, seeing Mira smile, that’s everything.”
This project was a dining room table with a track rail sliding chair to support three-year-old Mira, who has cerebral palsy. The project was part of the Early Intervention and Mechanical Engineering program, that creates and provides engineered products to children with special needs and their families in the Upper Cumberland region. Steve Canfield created the program, which has done more than 300 projects.
“Students look at the syllabus and it says we’re going to cover differential equations, solve linkages, their eyes glaze over,” said Canfield, professor of mechanical engineering at Tennessee Tech. “But when you say we’re going to build a machine to help this child they say, ah, I can understand that, although it turns out they need the engineering that we’re going to be covering in the class to make that work.”
Numerous projects are conducted each semester, with students working in teams of four. Jacob Nelson, Bryant Crawford, John Austin and Wes Yunker created and built the table. It has knobs attached so Mira, who can only use her left hand, can be mobile and get exercise at the table.
“To see her be able to sit there with good posture and be able move herself and see how happy and proud she was of herself for doing that, it doesn’t get better than that,” said Ashley Steakley, Mira’s mom.
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