The Human Engineering Research Laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh has been designing products to help injured veterans and others with disabilities for more than two decades. But it took a young staff member with a background in education policy to prod it to help disabled vets begin STEM careers of their own.
The lab has 80 research projects underway, including programs to develop wheelchairs that can climb stairs and robotic arms that can prepare breakfast. Founded in 1994, the lab has long maintained a focus on helping military veterans; its director, Rory A. Cooper, began using a wheelchair after suffering a spinal-cord injury in 1980 while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army.
A decade ago, Mary R. Goldberg was hired to run the lab’s internship program. She immediately noticed that while veterans were being brought in to consult on product design, they rarely joined the internship program.
“We were developing products that would be used to serve veterans, but we weren’t primarily serving the vets themselves,” she says.
Together with Mr. Cooper, she designed a summer program at the lab to help injured vets transition into science and math careers. The program, called Experiential Learning for Veterans in Assistive Technology and Engineering, or ELeVATE, provides students with counseling and instruction in math and writing, and requires them to work on a research project with mentors. The students eventually present a technical paper on their research at a mini-symposium held at Pitt.
About 30 vets have gone through the program, which pays a stipend worth $4,000 plus help with housing and travel expenses for those who need it. Matt Hannan participated in the program in 2012, after retiring from a 15-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps that ended with a back injury sustained in Iraq. He says a short career-oriented course offered by the military — with brief instruction on business attire and writing a résumé — did little to prepare him for the transition back to civilian life. But the ELeVATE course did work, he says: He sharpened his long-neglected math skills and worked on several projects at the lab, including a physical-activity monitor used by people with manual wheelchairs to track their daily exercise.
The lab was developing products for veterans, ‘but we weren’t primarily serving the vets themselves.’
“That fusion of working with technology and bringing together like-minded people really creates an environment similar to the unit camaraderie that you find in the military,” Mr. Hannan says.
He still works in the lab as an unpaid fellow, and hopes to become a rehabilitation counselor. For now he is taking a break from his Pitt education to help care for his ailing father.
Two grants totaling $622,000 from the National Science Foundation have paid for ELeVATE since its inception in 2011. Both grants have expired, but the lab plans to keep the program going this summer with its own funds, foundation support, and a crowdfunding campaign on a site called EngagePitt. The lab is also seeking a second NSF grant to work more closely with vets who have already entered college but are struggling.
ELeVATE not only has helped many veterans but has also been a boost to Ms. Goldberg’s career. As she describes it, she fell into the work at the research lab, then fell in love with it. She studied Spanish and psychology as a Pitt undergrad and stayed on to earn a master’s degree in higher-education policy and administration. She thought she would pursue a counseling career but stumbled upon the job running the lab’s internship program while looking for a position in student affairs.
Her success in managing ELeVATE and other programs earned Ms. Goldberg a promotion to director of education and outreach. In 2013 she completed a Ph.D. in education administration. Six months later, she was named an assistant professor in the department of rehabilitation science and technology.
“Mary brought the science of education to what we do,” Mr. Cooper says. “I’m an engineer. The educational theory that Mary brought has helped make our program better.”
Ms. Goldberg, 33, has coupled her student-affairs background with her research interests to work on a wide variety of projects. Societal efforts to assist those with disabilities are still at an early stage, she says; the Americans With Disabilities Act is only 26 years old. “It’s an area in which you can get dirty in the trenches,” Ms. Goldberg says. “There are a lot of ways to make an impact.”
She and her colleagues at Pitt have received more than $2 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop an organization called the International Society of Wheelchair Professionals. Ms. Goldberg is in charge of advocacy and outreach for the organization, which seeks to create a certification process for wheelchair providers and to raise awareness about the estimated 80 million people worldwide who need wheelchairs but don’t have them.
She also teaches a course called “Introduction to Rehabilitation Engineering Design,” a service-learning class in which graduate students design products to help disabled people. One student is creating a digital micrometer, a measuring device that will audibly read out measurements for a blind man who works in a machine shop.
Ms. Goldberg and one of her graduate students have also developed a peer-review system designed for engineering classes. The system, called PeerAGE, can accept files used by engineering students, such as three-dimensional PDFs and computer-aided design files. If several groups of students are working in teams, the system randomly assigns them submitted projects for peer evaluation. PeerAGE, which is still under development, could be widely used by universities that teach engineering design, Ms. Goldberg says.
“The teacher receives all of this feedback and could potentially use it as grading system,” she says. “But we’re more interested in what skills students could get by engaging in the peer-review process more frequently, such as increased self-reflection and increased comprehension by going through someone else’s design.”
Ms. Goldberg chairs a national committee that seeks to create an accreditation process for assistive-technology training programs, which prepare students to help disabled and elderly people find the technology they need. Pitt offers both a master’s degree and a certificate program in assistive technology.
After work hours, Ms. Goldberg leads spin classes in a couple of local gyms. “That’s the part that keeps me sane,” she says. “It’s a good balance for the cognitively intense side of my life.”
