This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site program, Rehabilitation Engineering at Cleveland State University (RE@CSU), offers an immersive experience in rehabilitation research that will help motivate and prepare a diverse group of students to pursue careers in rehabilitation engineering and assistive technology. The number of people with disabilities will increase in the United States in the coming decades due to an aging population and advances in medicine that extend the lives of people with chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes) and victims of traumatic accidents (e.g., car crashes). Despite the national need for rehabilitation technology, opportunities to enter the field of rehabilitation engineering are limited for many students and there is a critical need to increase and diversify the population of students equipped to pursue careers in rehabilitation engineering and assistive technology. Therefore the overall objectives of this project are to: 1) Immerse a diverse group of undergraduate engineering and computer science students in the challenges of developing technology to restore daily function to people who have limited ability to move their arms and legs. 2) Motivate students to pursue future opportunities in rehabilitation and assistive technology. 3) Empower students to succeed in careers in rehabilitation and assistive technology.
Over a three year period, the RE@CSU program will engage undergraduates students in a 10-week intensive, original and creative hands-on summer research and professional development/training experience centered around integrated learning communities that surround REU students with their peers, their mentors, medical professionals, and people with disabilities. The project's outcomes will be a diverse group of students motivated and prepared to pursue careers in rehabilitation and assistive technology and a structured program in immersing students in rehabilitation research that can be disseminated across the country. This program has a special emphasis on participation of students with disabilities and scholarship focused on understanding best practices in facilitating participation.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
