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Duke BME Instructor Wins Service-Learning Award
April 17, 2019
Kevin Caves has been named the winner of the 2019 Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Award at Duke.
Duke biomedical engineering instructor Kevin Caves has been named the winner of the faculty 2019 Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Award at Duke University.
The honor recognizes a faculty member for commitment to the ideals of service‐learning.
He teaches the BME 460L: Design for People with Disabilities, a capstone senior design service-learning course for biomedical engineers. In it, students are matched with a community member to develop and tailor assistive technology projects.
“I’m looking for people with problems for whom solutions don’t exist, or with existing solutions that we could make significant improvements to," Caves said. "The class challenges students to design, build, prototype, test and build a device that will actually get used by real people after they’re done.”
A team of students in the spring 2016 BME 460L course won the SourceAmerica Design Challenge, a national engineering competition. Caves also advises the student group Project Tadpole, which modifies and fixes toys for physically challenged children and helps teach their parents how to do the same. He was also a part of the 2018 Teaching for Equity Fellows Program.
At the Duke University School of Medicine, he is a clinical associate in the departments of Surgery and Medicine.