Dankmeyer is committed to providing service to our communities in several ways. Our practitioners and technical staff members have become mentors to local high school students, who participate in STEM programs and complete research projects in the field of orthotics and prosthetics. This year, Mary Reedy, CP and Daniel Weiser, Resident Orthotist/Prosthetist had the pleasure of mentoring two incredible students in the Cecil County School of Technology Project Lead the Way program. Please read about their projects and experiences. We wish them success in their future!

My name is Emily Custer, I will be graduating from Rising Sun High School in June of 2021. I plan to attend Cecil College in the Fall of 2021 where I will be majoring in Biological Sciences. During this uncertain time, conducting a capstone project has been difficult as well as very rewarding. I chose this capstone project due to my personal experience with Drop Wrist.

The main purpose of this capstone project was to engineer an orthotic to help increase muscle mass in patients with radial nerve palsy that experienced a drop wrist with little to no hand function. The data showed significant trends, the prototype group increases the percent of muscle mass half as much as the control group. The statistical test performed on the data was known as a dependent t-test. This test concluded that the data results rejected the null hypothesis. If this experiment were conducted again, the lead engineer would improve my prototype by picking different types of material to see if the durability would be better the next time around, as well as maybe seeing if the wrist diameter increases more with different material.

One source of error that impacted the project was the time constraint due to not having enough data to run an accurate statistical analysis. Another source of error that impacted the project could be the materials used were not as durable as they could have been. Over all, this capstone project displays significant evidence, the drop wrist orthotic prototype significantly increased the percentage of muscle mass.

My name is Susanna Kress and I am a senior at both Elkton High School and Cecil County School of Technology. This fall I will be attending Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a biomed track. 

Over the past year I have been working on my capstone project and I had the pleasure of having Mrs. Mary Reedy as my mentor. My project was to create a lower limb prosthetic device that can function for both walking and competitive swimming. I came up with this idea because my friend lost her leg and it made swimming a challenge for her. Seeing her take the prosthetic device off, swim, and then put it back on made me realize how much of a struggle she goes through every day. I wanted to try and make at least one part of her day as normal as possible. 

To fix that problem I ran a couple of tests to figure out what material would work best for the device. After doing tensile strength and water reaction tests I found that polypropylene and AMB resin were the two best materials for this device. I also came up with a design that allows for quick changing from the walking mode to swimming mode. All you have to do is pop out the ankle/shin portion out of the foot and there is another hole in the foot at an angle that is at the right angle for plantar flexion. This way allows for the amputee to do 3 out of the 4 swimming strokes.

While I was not able to make a real prosthetic, I was able to make a prototype that we printed out on a 3D printer. My main goal was for my friend to be able to walk to the pool, get in the water, and then change the mode all in seconds. With this design, I believe I was able to complete that goal.