KTRV Fox 12 High School Students Win National Engineer Award

High School Students Win National Engineer Award

Boise, Idaho -- Students at Bishop Kelly High School are winning big.

A group recently took home top honors at the National Engineering Design Challenge. They created a device that's making a big difference for one Treasure Valley man.

Writing a grocery list and being at the store and thinking, 'what in the world is that?' A little task like writing a note can be daunting for Bill Clark, who suffers from a tremor disorder. He says, "It requires two hands and is very slow and sometimes doesn't work."

Thanks to Bishop Kelly students, life just got a little easier. The engineering design class created a device specifically for Clark.

"We found out the position of his wrists, the motion of his hand," said student Sam Kosydar. "The use of his motor skills triggered his tremors."

The creation is called PAWD. It stands for Personal Assistive Writing Device. It uses padding to stabilize his wrists and fingers and has a pen holder attached to it. It's a project that's paying off in more ways than one.

"Going from handwriting that's not even legible to be able to write clear legible sentences, that's definitely been an accomplishment," said Student Nick Wendt.

And it has already made a difference for one man.

"To be able to sign a Christmas card and they know who it is from," said Clark.

The students hope the device will eventually help other people. They say it's inexpensive to make, so it could eventually help people in third world countries.