UPEI student engineers solve challenges for community partners

From a better way to play bocce in a wheelchair, to a tracker that adjusts solar panels, this year's projects by students at UPEI's Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering are making a difference, as the young engineers learn important lessons about their future profession. 

"Other schools don't have this, year after year working on projects, and certainly not with the community," said assistant professor Libby Osgood.

"They're learning about the things that they would learn in other schools, but here they're implementing it, and practicing it."

Natasha Benoit, a volunteer with Special Olympics, came to the engineering program looking for a better way for athletes in wheelchairs to play bocce. 

"The athletes are of all different ranges of abilities, so some you have to help more than others," she said. "So it became a challenge to hold a ramp, hold the ball, help them with their hands."

Benoit said the new ramp will make a huge difference for some of the athletes.

"A bocce ball can be quite heavy, and some athletes don't have the ability to hold something that heavy," she said.

"For the volunteer, it frees up our hands so we can be more animated, and more helpful, and just make it a better experience."

Spencer Blacquiere, a third-year engineering student, said he's looking forward to seeing athletes using the invention.

"That's going to be a very special moment, and something we've been looking forward to this whole semester," he said. 

"You design this project with the athletes and the volunteers in mind, and getting to see them actually use what we've built is going to be rewarding."

For second-year student Amara Sanchez and her classmates, the challenge was to find a way for a young Mi'kmaw boy to take part in traditional drumming. 

"He has very limited mobility, and he can only move his arms within a certain range," Sanchez said.