The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded WestEd a contract to conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the Accessibility, Rehabilitation, and Medical Science (ARMS): An Interdisciplinary Traineeship Program In Health-Centered Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

ARMS is designed to provide a comprehensive, potentially transformative, training opportunity for future generation of engineers interested in the emerging interdisciplinary field of health-centered robotics.

ARMS will ultimately produce a new graduate program that incorporates a graduate degree in robotics, project-based coursework, and interdisciplinary research training that provides students with hands-on training in the health care domain.

WestEd’s Daniel Bugler and Jenna Terrell are co-directing the five-year, NSF-funded evaluation of ARMS.

WestEd will seek to answer formative research questions on the implementation of ARMS at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and summative research questions related to the effects of ARMS on students’ career outcomes and faculty research networks.

WestEd will use a mixed-method approach to answering the evaluation questions, including interviews with health care business partners and surveys measuring technical and non-technical student skills and faculty research productivity.

“We are excited to work with the Georgia Institute of Technology on this competitive and innovative grant to train the next generation of healthcare engineers,” says Bugler.