With the assistance of MIE professors Donald Fisher, Janis Terpenny, and Robert Gao, the senior design class was born. It turns out that nearby Hampshire College already has in place an entrepreneurial design program open to students enrolled in any of the Five Colleges. The pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. With both of these groups right down the road, we decided to ask them for some direction. Out of that, came this very positive partnership and a program that has opened doors for students from both institutions.
Students say they thrived on the three-way partnership.
The program was completely independent - from start to finish. The machine shop in E-Lab was very helpful, and Bruce Stewart went out of his way to help me fabricate my model. All four student projects required solving real problems with simple, but inexpensive solutions. It couldn't impede entry or exit from the chair, and it had to be easy for someone to install on an existing wheelchair. I'm not sure how long I worked on it, but it was probably about ten hours a week for two semesters.