By Carol Biliczky
Akron Beacon Journal
AKRON, Ohio — With the use of only one hand, Tom Regan, 31, used to have trouble trimming stray grass at the same height on the lawn for his job at Earth Care.
Those days are behind him now, thanks to some mechanical engineering students at the University of Akron.
The fifth-year students spent months developing adaptive equipment to help clients do their jobs at Weaver Industries, a nonprofit that provides vocational training and jobs to 700 developmentally disabled adults in Summit County, Ohio.
“This opens up the door to helping more clients,” said Weaver operations supervisor Bryan Ziegler. “This makes a huge difference.”
Regan is among the clients who work in the nonprofit’s five businesses, which range from commercial cleaning to packing and assembly, or at Weaver Workshop, which is operated by the Summit County Developmental Disabilities Board. When employed by Weaver, the clients learn how to perform their jobs under staff supervision. In the Earth Care groundskeeping business, that includes mowing in straight lines and differentiating between weeds and flowers.
They are paid an hourly wage to perform work for primarily commercial clients that include the Summit Housing Development Corp., A. Schulman and the Akron Zoo.
Sometimes the workers need still more help because of physical limitations, Weaver Executive Director Jeff Johnson said.
“We have to provide a quality service to our customers, but we’re also training people with disabilities,” he said. “We’re always trying to increase the capabilities of our workers.”
Johnson hit on the idea of contacting the University of Akron’s mechanical engineering program with a simple message: “Help.”
Coincidentally, the school’s engineering students needed to find “capstone” projects — real-life mechanical engineering challenges — in their final year, said Jon Gerhardt, the University of Akron associate professor who oversaw the student designs. “It was a perfect fit.”
About 18 University of Akron mechanical engineering students spent months designing solutions for Earth Care employee challenges, from design to prototypes.
“I learned that plans change,” said Cory Austin, a fifth-year engineering student. “We originally had a plan, then we had another plan. But I feel we did a good job.”
Austin worked as part of a six-person team that developed an edge guard for a weed trimmer. The device ensures that Earth Care workers can cut grasses at a set height.
Other students designed a device to steer a lawn mower with one hand and a device to drive a lawn mower with feet.
The equipment will help the Earth Care workers to be more efficient, and ideally, make more money.
The innovations will help the nonprofit expand its offerings, Johnson, the executive director, said.
Weaver is thinking of reaching out to military veterans with disabilities, such as missing limbs or partial paralysis who also could use adaptive equipment.
That in turn would help Weaver to meet another goal: to integrate its primary clients, the developmentally disabled, into the community and independent jobs outside of Weaver Industries.
In the meantime, the college students’ inventions were so practical that one Weaver board member asked to buy one for himself when the students presented their work to officials.
Gerhardt said he would look into the possibility of commercializing the students’ designs.
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