Established in 1998, The Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center at Hampshire College provides students with experiential education in applied design, invention, and entrepreneurship through the lens of assistive technology and universal design. LATDC achieves this with a combination of courses, activities, internships, collaborations and business and non-profit organizations, and through teams of students who design, develop and make available equipment for people with disabilities. LATDC caries out its mission and achieves its goals through its programmatic components:

Courses: LATDC's academic courses at Hampshire College use assistive technology as the teaching medium and include areas such as soft goods design and construction, mechanical design and construction, and universal design. Issues covered include the principles of applied design, anatomy and ergonomics, problem-solving and need-finding, market influence on design, prototype building and testing, consumer research, establishing design parameters, intellectual property protection, and the impact of our society's aging on design. Courses are experiential and include student participation in prototype construction, with some of this student-created equipment placed into the hands of the public for real-world use. LATDC offers regular semester-long academic courses as well as workshops, seminars, technical trainings, and January term classes.

Watch LATDC's "Designing a Difference" video

Grants and Internships. LATDC offers grants to students to research, design, prototype and test their innovative new projects or products, as well as to protect their intellectual property or find ways to get their projects into the hands of people who need them. LATDC provides advice and support to budding entrepreneurial ventures around assistive and universal designs. LATDC supports students' personal development in assisitve and universal design by providing opportunities and funding for summer and semester-long internships.

Advisors and Mentors: Technical advisors and mentors facilitate student projects and assist with the advancement of worthy projects, in providing internships, and in supplying expertise. Aside from LATDC's on-site assistance, LATDC's collaborators in business and non-profit organizations provide project ideas, technical assistance, community links, and avenues to get the innovative new designs in use by the public.

Prototyping Center: LATDC is housed in and supports the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for Design, which plays a key role in turning ideas and design concepts into mock-ups, models and prototypes. The facility is open to all students at any level, who learn how to build and fabricate their own projects through trainings on a wide range of equipment and tooling, chiefly in metals and plastics. The facility is also equipped with a design lab for manual and computer-aided drafting, a small resource library, and a variety of home and industrial sewing equipment for soft goods creation.

Events: LATDC hosts an annual assistive technology forum each spring. The Forum brings together assistive technology designers, industry experts, people with disabilities, OTs and PTs, engineers, college faculty and students, to encourage discussion of needs and transfer of information and ideas. The Forum helps LATDC spread its message regarding the role of assistive technology, increases LATDC's public visibility, and provides valuable feedback on our society's changing needs in a range of assistive technology areas. Other LATDC events include a year-long speaker series and field trips to provide students with opportunities to round out their knowledge of the fields.

Program Scope: While LATDC is based at Hampshire College, a small private liberal arts college in Western Massachusetts known for its experiential education, it has begun working with and providing opportunities to students within the valley's 5-college system. These include the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, and Amherst College. LATDC also engages in collaborative efforts with several other New England universities. A number of colleges and universities nationwide have begun approaching LATDC to borrow elements of its unique model.

Visit the LATDC Web site for more information.