10/30/2018 –
Mande Hudson is a 2015 MESA graduate of Goddard High School in Roswell. She was very active in her school MESA program and attributes her college choice of NM Tech to the experiences she received during her five years as a MESA student.
She is currently a Senior at NM Tech and is majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Biomedical Engineering. Mande has been working with a team of other NM Tech students on their “Steinhoff Prosthetic Research Initiative”. The SPRI team has worked to design a custom prosthetic hand for one of the faculty members at NM Tech, Ms. Edie Steinhoff, who lost most of the fingers on her left hand in a table saw accident in November 2016. The team has designed a 3D printable hand, an FMG (Force Myography) arm band, and a cable routing system that allows actuators and electronics to be housed remotely. She attributes her love for engineering to her experiences in NM MESA. NM MESA made her career choice easy.
The following are Mande’s reflection on her experiences as a NM MESA student:
My participation in five years of NM MESA greatly shaped my career choice. It allowed me to explore different types of engineering through its competitions. These activities included entrepreneurship as well as civil, structural, electrical, mechanical and biomedical engineering. To be the best, you have to compete with the best. MESA made this possible. The MESA program’s Robotic Arm competition motivated me to choose a career in biomedical engineering because I wanted to pursue the world of prostheses.
I am now in college perfecting my senior design project using the engineering processes I learned in MESA and developing a 3D printed hand for an actual amputee patient. My team and I plan to continue perfecting Ms. Steinhoff’s functioning prosthetic hand. I am very thankful for the opportunities and experiences I received as an NM MESA student.
