The students are excited about what they have to do. They learn a little physics, what engineers and veterinarians do, and how we would officially diagnosis. We end by telling them that the explosion of technology is amazing.
Animal-Based Engineering Challenges Draw in Future Vets and Biomedical Engineers
For the tenth year running, Dr. Cynthia Webster will present at the Girl Scouts’ Geek Is Glam STEM Expo
“I couldn’t go through a day in the clinic without the magnitude of inventions by biomedical engineers,” says Dr. Cynthia Leveille-Webster (she/her), who has taught and practiced veterinary medicine for 30 years at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, as a professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences and part of the Internal Medicine Team at Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals.
She has found a unique way to combine the two fields to inspire the next generation of veterinarians and biomedical engineers.
It all started when she was asked to speak to her son’s first-grade class about her career.. “I was kind of terrified, but it was amazing. The kids were so engaged,” she recalls.
Dr. Webster connected with Tufts’ Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) to help develop programs for K-12 students. She ended up creating animal-based engineering challenges. Since pet ownership is so high in the United States, she explains that most kids have experienced that animal-human bond and emotional attachment to their own pets, so she centers the challenges around animals to land the kids’ attention. “I push engineering design challenges to kids, cloaked in a clinical case they have to help us solve.”
Students are presented with one of a few animal-based engineering challenges. In “Sounds All Around Design,” she shows the students Barry, a stuffed dog with a speaker inside that mimics the sounds of a heartbeat. First, she describes his symptoms: coughing, difficulty breathing, and refusing to go on walks. She starts up an interactive discussion with the students about what might ail him, how the heart and lungs work, the physics of turbulent and laminar flows, eventually moving towards the conclusion that they need a specialized device to listen to his heart to make a diagnosis. The students then design and build a rudimentary stethoscope out of tubes, funnels, duct tape, and bottlecaps. They test their prototypes on a computer, and once they work, listen to Barry’s heartbeat.
In the “Prosthetic Party Design” scenario, a dog with bone cancer has had his front leg amputated, and students are tasked to create a prosthetic leg for him. Dr. Webster adapted these first two presentations from TeachEngineering, a website funded by the National Science Foundation. She came up with other challenges entirely on her own. In “Down Dachshund Design,” students build an assistive device for a dog paralyzed by a disc protrusion. She wraps up the presentations by stressing how essential biomedical engineering is to veterinarians.
“The students are excited about what they have to do,” she says. “They learn a little physics, what engineers and veterinarians do, and how we would officially diagnose. We end by telling them that the explosion of technology is amazing.”
She gives the example of a new handheld ultrasound that can be used as a phone app to make a diagnosis. “It allows you to bring an ultrasound to a larger spectrum of clientele, maybe that couldn’t afford to see a specialist.”
Dr. Webster presented one of her first animal-based engineering challenges at the inaugural Geek Is Glam STEM Expo, hosted by the Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts (GSCWM) in 2014. Her interactive presentations have since become a staple of the annual conference for girls in fourth through eighth grades to learn about science, technology, engineering, and math from women who are experts in the fields. The girls participate in workshops, demonstrations, and career panels, delving into as cyber safety, starting a business, rockets, and space.
“Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts loves working with Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. For ten years, Dr. Webster has presented real-life scenarios negatively affecting dogs and cats to group after group of very engaged middle school girls who are always eager to fix whatever ails them. They are learning about problem-solving through STEM and what a career in STEM might look like. Whether it’s engineering a prosthetic for a puppy with an injured leg or creating a listening device to help Abby the Lab, Dr. Webster’s workshops at Geek Is Glam are among the most popular, and the sessions that fill up first,” says Tammy Breen, special events and project manager for GSCWM.
Now in its tenth year, the upcoming Geek Is Glam STEM Expo happens on October 13 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Dr. Webster will run about half a dozen presentations for the girls and typically brings along two or three faculty, staff, or students from Cummings School to help out. This past June, the Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts presented a Community Supporter Certificate to Cummings School for significant contribution and support to the Girl Scouts.
“All girls need to learn that they can become engineers,” says Dr. Webster. “I like the title, Geek Is Glam. I want to show that it’s cool to be a nerd—and fun, and they can do that with animals or as a biomedical engineer. The event is very well run, and the girls are incredibly engaged. It’s a win-win situation for me.”
Originally from Turners Falls in western Massachusetts, Dr. Webster feels a connection with the girls in the Central and Western Massachusetts Girls Scouts. “To be honest, I always wanted to be a Girl Scout. I grew up in a small town that was very isolated. I was not aware of what I could become. It took my guidance counselors to convince me to go to school in Boston—that opened my eyes to what’s out there. I want to put students in a position to realize that engineering or veterinary medicine is in their grasp.”
Her presentations are also an integral part of Cummings School’s Adventures in Veterinary Medicine (AVM) programs, offered to middle school, high school, and college students to gain exposure to veterinary medicine and learn about careers in the field. She recently presented to high school students in the AVM summer pre-college program, sharing how veterinarians use diagnostic tools invented by biomedical engineers, like ultrasound and x-rays, every day in the course of their work.
While her longest-running gig has been for Geek Is Glam, Dr. Webster also presents her animal-based engineering challenges at community and school events all over Massachusetts, including elementary and middle schools, Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs, and has an annual presentation at the STEM4Girls day at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. She works and shares her passion for community outreach with the other members of the Cummings Community Outreach Working Group which runs out of the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Climate office headed by Associate Dean Flo Tseng.
“It’s always rewarding to present to students. They’re very excited and ask a lot of questions,” Dr. Webster says. “I bring the fun and challenges of veterinary medicine to underrepresented groups, to at least think about engineering or veterinary medicine as a possibility. It’s an opportunity to show them the opportunity.”
Department:
Dept. of Clinical Sciences