Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School has been awarded a prestigious $7,500 Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam® grant, placing the school among just eight high schools nationwide selected for this year’s cohort. The grant will support Bay Path students as they design and build an invention so that wheelchair users can more easily access sandy beaches.

The project, launched by science teacher and InvenTeam® facilitator Kristine Wade, focuses on improving mobility, safety, comfort, and overall independence for wheelchair users navigating beach environments, an area where accessibility remains a significant challenge. Over the next eight months, the student team will develop a fully functioning prototype designed to address these obstacles with innovative engineering and user-centered design.

The InvenTeam® will present its initial progress during a local mid-grant review in February, followed by a national debut at EurekaFest® at MIT in June, where student inventors from across the country gather to showcase their solutions to real-world problems.

Team member and student communications leader Jazzelle said that each student takes part in a different process as they develop the invention.

“Some days we go through group-related activities that help us minimize or choose which ideas we want,” she said. “This can include brainstorming, figuring out how different technical parts can go together, researching how different mechanics work, giving presentations of our ideas, prototyping together, and just trying to help everyone on the team understand the given topic.”

Sound complicated? Yes, it can be. But the goal is co-operative learning with a focus on solutions.

According to Jazzelle, “There is a lot of trial and error, but an idea is never shot down. Other days, there are models made - whether it is online using CAD software or using materials we have in the classroom - that aids us into getting closer to picking what design we want for our wheelchair.”

Each student is assigned a team: communications, technical, sustainability, or financial. 

“Right now, the technical team is doing a lot of the work as we are still in the prototyping and brainstorming phase. The technical students work with people’s ideas and try to make it a reality. They are the ones that create models with CAD software and 3-D print them to show and explain to the team,” she explained. “Sustainability and financial will play a bigger part once our prototypes become bigger and more realistic. Communications is still trying to get the word out to more people about our invention.”

The Communications team is also dealing with media requests and is in contact with a speaker who has volunteered to talk about his experience with wheelchairs, Jazelle said.

Progress has been excellent.

“As of lately, we have gotten closer to narrowing down what we want to prototype on a larger scale,” she said. “This will give us a big step in the right direction to see what will work and what will not when our ideas are applied to a real wheelchair.”

The Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam® program, now in its 21st year, supports invention education in high schools while working to expand participation among communities historically underrepresented in patenting, entrepreneurship, and STEM fields. The initiative fosters creativity, technical skill development, and collaborative problem-solving, giving students firsthand experience in engineering design and invention processes.

“We are incredibly proud of our students and grateful for this opportunity,” said Wade. “This grant allows our team to pursue an invention that can make a meaningful impact on accessibility and inclusion.”

The InvenTeam® students are Alivia, Ava, Brian, Christopher, Cole, Emily, Gianna, Jadyn, Jazzelle, Jordan, Julianis, Logan, Matilda, Michael, Nicholas, Olivia, Paul, Perry, Ryan, Sawyer, Shafick, Victoria, Warren, Yadiel and Zachary.

Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School are residents of Auburn, Charlton, Dudley, North Brookfield, Oxford, Paxton, Rutland, Southbridge, Spencer, and Webster. W

Follow the team’s progress on Instagram:bpinventeam.