Cary Hitchcock Cass, a graduate nursing student, and McKenzie Hodge, a graduate chemical engineering student, talk to senior citizens in Havana.
Faculty, staff and students from Tennessee Tech and the Universidad Tecnologica de La Habana recently teamed up to help senior citizens in Cuba.
With funding provided by a U.S. Embassy Mission to Cuba grant, nursing and chemical engineering students in Tech’s Clinical Immersion at Disciplinary Interfaces course traveled to Havana, Cuba, and spent a week identifying problems that impact healthcare and developing prototypes through reiterative design.
“We submitted a proposal to the American Embassy in Cuba about sharing the clinical immersion experience with the engineering school in Cuba. Of the 250 proposals that were submitted, only 15 were funded, and we were one of those,” said Tech nursing professor Melissa Geist. “Not only was it interdisciplinary, it was also cross-cultural with students having to cross cultural boundaries.”
Geist, along with assistant professor of chemical engineering Robby Sanders, engineering specialist Marbin Pazos-Revilla and director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Michael Aikens, led Tech students Yocelyne Angulo, Whitley Battles, Sarah Beth Cain, Cary Hitchcock Cass, Jennifer Condra, Mackenzie Hodge, Sergio Ramirez and Ashley Wheeler in helping discover problems common to elderly including chronic pain, loss of functional independence, fear of falling and so on.
“Often with cultural exchanges, we only get to see one part of the people,” said Cass, a nursing graduate student. “With this one, we got to see students and older people in the community.”
The Tech and UTH students spent the week collaborating and using low-budget prototyping and reiterative design to come up with concepts for devices to solve the identifiable problems.
“Their students were so eager to learn,” Sanders said. “There were so many commonalities that really stood out.”
After spending time in the community and speaking with several Cuban senior citizens, the students discovered that the older adults suffered from chronic pain due to musculoskeletal fatigue and arthritis. This became the focus for several of the teams.
“The cultural experience was very rewarding,” Cass said. “I don’t think at any point I felt unwelcome. They were very candid, respectful and curious as much as we were.”
After overcoming cultural barriers and identifying the target problems, the Tech and UTH teams spent the rest of the week designing prototypes for their healthcare devices. One of the prototypes included gloves for stiff joints in arthritic hands.
All of the teams presented their prototypes in English and Spanish to Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, deputy chief of mission Scott Hamilton, and other U.S. Embassy staff. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
“The staff at the embassy were wowed,” said Geist. “We had no idea how this was going to play out.”
The result of the trip could be felt for years to come. The faculty and administration from both universities discussed detailed plans for another project to take place in May 2018. There are also plans among Tech and UTH faculty to produce manuscripts documenting the experience for publication and presentations. There is also interest among two of the groups to enter Tech’s Eagle Works competition with their prototypes.
“It was an amazing experience. I got outside of my comfort zone,” Cass said. “With this globalization we have now, the class and this project sets up engineering and nursing students for success. You never know what experience it may give them to broaden their horizons.”
“The impact that it has left on the students is tremendous,” Sanders said. “To be able to have a better appreciation for how the world works is a tremendously valuable experience.”