Emily Maish needed a prosthetic hand that wouldn’t weigh her down on a trip to Europe with her mother, who uses a wheelchair. Her insurance-provided prosthetic arm was expensive, heavy and cumbersome to travel with, so a group of Hoover teenagers built her something lighter instead, designing and 3D-printing a custom device from a classroom at Spain Park High School.
The project came out of the Spain Park Engineering Academy, led by Elizabeth Browne, an engineering teacher and the academy’s director, according to HooverSun.com. Senior students in the academy designed and 3D-printed the device for Maish, and the finished hand gave her a lighter option than the prosthetic her insurance had provided. Students met with Maish directly and heard firsthand how her existing prosthetic could affect the trip, per the same account.
Two senior students worked on the prosthetic during lunch and study periods, and one of them kept building at home over spring break to make sure the device was ready in time for Maish’s trip. The design itself wasn’t one-size-fits-all: the report notes that a prosthetic’s design depends on the type and amount of limb a person has and what the device needs to accomplish.
How Spain Park Became an Approved E-Nable Club
The prosthetic project connected to e-NABLE, a nonprofit that Fiona Selle introduced to Browne as a way to link volunteers with people who need prosthetic devices. e-NABLE describes itself as a global online community whose volunteers use 3D printers to make free or low-cost upper-limb prosthetic devices for children and adults, according to enablingthefuture.org, which estimates roughly 40,000 volunteers across more than 100 countries have delivered free hands and arms to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 recipients worldwide.
To join that network, Spain Park students had to demonstrate proper production and assembly of prosthetics, submitting photos and videos showing the devices’ function and quality. The school’s own account describes Spain Park as Alabama’s first approved e-NABLE club and one of the only high school clubs of its kind in America, per the HooverSun report.
A Teacher Who Found Her Classroom Late
Browne joined Spain Park High School as an engineering teacher just days before the school year began, and she had not worked as a traditional classroom teacher before that. Before entering education, she worked as a consultant for small and midsize manufacturers, helping companies manage environmental and safety programs.
She has said she wanted to be the teacher she had needed back in high school, and her approach centers on connecting engineering education to caring for people. Browne has said she wants to challenge the idea that engineering is neither creative nor caring, arguing that students who use their learning to solve a real problem for a real person find the work more meaningful.
Adaptive Cars, a Robotic Dog and a Grounded Aircraft
The prosthetic hand is one piece of a broader pattern of capstone projects that let Spain Park seniors pursue their own interests while applying the skills they’ve learned in the academy. Students have built adaptive cars through the Go Baby Go program and delivered them to children through United Ability, work that builds on a partnership between the Spain Park Engineering Academy and United Ability’s Hand In Hand Early Learning Program that is now in its fourth year, according to a separate HooverSun report on that collaboration. Browne has said that partnership began when she reached out to United Ability in search of meaningful, real-world design opportunities for her seniors, and students have used circuit modification, 3D printing and custom harness fabrication, supported in part by a Toshiba grant, to adapt electric cars for kids’ independent use.
Similar adaptive-vehicle work has happened elsewhere in the Birmingham area: in June 2019, faculty, alumni and students from UAB’s physical therapy, occupational therapy and engineering programs adapted electric toy cars for Alabama children with disabilities as part of Birmingham’s GoBabyGo chapter, according to UAB, which noted that families keep the modified cars at no cost.
Other Spain Park seniors have pursued projects in robotics and biomedical engineering, including a student who built a robotic dog meant to help people with diabetes monitor blood sugar. That device includes a website and app for control, along with an algorithm designed to predict blood sugar levels over the following 30 minutes and a compartment for snacks or juice. Another student designed a wearable aircraft and explored an aviation project, but Browne stopped the student’s plan to launch the device from the back of a moving truck on safety grounds. She has said she tries to support student ideas while still weighing safety.
Encouraging More Girls Into Engineering
Browne also advocates for diversity in engineering and encourages more girls to consider careers in the field. National data underscores the gap she’s pushing against: women represent 35% of the STEM workforce despite making up 48% of the total workforce, according to ngcproject.org, even though girls perform as well as boys in most K-12 STEM subjects.
The same organization reports that the number of women working in STEM roles rose 31% between 2011 and 2021, and that Hispanic, Black, and American Indian/Alaska Native workers held 24% of STEM jobs in 2021, up from 18% in 2011, according to ngcproject.org’s workforce statistics. A March 2025 report from the group found that 86% of girls and young women want a career where they can help others, while stereotypes about girls’ interest in computer science and engineering can form as early as age 6 — and that women currently earn 22% of bachelor’s degrees in engineering. The same report found that interaction with diverse women role models can shift girls’ perceptions about who participates in STEM, a dynamic Browne’s own classroom, and Emily Maish’s new prosthetic hand, seem built to put into practice.
