Advanced Arm Dynamics (AAD) of Texas, Irving, recently helped a group of eighth graders take fourth place out of 45,000 original competitors in the 30th Annual Texas History Day Contest, an affiliate of the National History Program.
The theme of this year’s competition was “Innovation in History,” and for their submissions, students in sixth through twelth grade had a choice of submitting a performance, website, historical paper, documentary, or exhibit in accordance with the theme. A team from the Dallas-Fort Worth region, Rebecca Gold, Shelby Johnson, Corinne Kowald, and Amy Lytle, decided to create a play on the history of innovation in prosthetics and approached AAD for help. According to AAD, the company’s team members worked with the girls for months, showing them various prostheses and how they work, introducing them to patients, taking them on tours of their facilities and lab, and even lending them four prosthetic arms to use when performing their play.
After first winning their school and the Dallas-Fort Worth regional competitions, the girls were among 1,000 students allowed to compete at the state level over the weekend of May 8 in Austin, Texas. The girls won fourth place overall.