IATP Makers worked with the Illinois Design Educators Association (IDEA) helping to inspire a prompt for their engineering design competition. High school teams from across the state come up with a design solution for a prompt provided. The Maker team reached out to Michael Knepler, a member of the IATP board of directors, who has a spinal cord injury, to ask what product he would like to challenge students to create. He requested a grabber that was more efficient than the typical commercial grabber products that are readily available and that would be more suitable to his needs.

Teams first competed at the regional level, then winning teams moved to compete at the state level. The Makers team and Michael were a part of the judging panel at the state competition to decide the winning product.

Congratulations to Plano High School (Joe Kampf) students Caidan Ronning, Rider Larson and Isaac Uhrich for finishing 1st place! Their “Bat Tool” featured a collapsable grabber that extended to reach objects by pressing a button. IATP also extends congratulations and thanks to all the teams that participated. Overall, the engineering prompt gave students the opportunity to practice engineering skills while designing a needed product for a customer. Contact the Maker team if you are an Illinois resident in need of a unique design that you would like to submit for consideration for next year’s competition.