This extracurricular club at Temple creates prosthetics and other bio-mechanical devices for humans and animals

Morgan Rollins, a Temple University bioengineering major, is right where any soon-to-graduate senior would hope to be: ready to take on the world as her career takes off.

There was a time, when she was a freshman, when she couldn’t imagine feeling as excited about her future as she does today. Back then, while playing for Temple’s women’s soccer team, she suffered a serious shoulder injury. The sport had been her passion at her alma mater, Tower Hill High School in Delaware, where she’d been the team goalkeeper and had suffered three prior shoulder injuries. Her doctor’s warning, after this latest one, was firm: Give up soccer or forget about ever holding the children she might one day have.

Rollins fell into a depression and might have stayed there had it not been for her growing interest in biomechanics. The field had sparked her fascination back in high school, where her anatomy teacher had the class make a “prosthetic” hand, designed to hold a soda can, out of paper and string. In another class, Rollins attempted to create a bionic arm using 3-D printing. The more she learned about the power of biomechanics to change lives — through the use of prosthetics for those who’ve lost limbs, for example — the hungrier she became for more hands-on experience in creating these life-enhancing devices.

So she founded a club called Temple Prosthetics and Orthotics — TemPO for short — hoping enough students would join her in its audacious extracurricular mission: designing prosthetics that could, conceivably, one day be used by those who can’t afford them.

Three school years later, TemPO has nearly 200 members. While most are engineering students, quite a few are majoring in film, healthcare, communications, art, and business. Some are interested in exploring engineering as a career. Others just want to use their skills to further the club’s altruistic mission.

“My favorite thing about [TemPO] is that it allows people to discover their passions or challenge themselves,” Rollins, 22, said. “It’s really cool to see how many people this has affected and how this has taken off.”

» READ MORE: Life after injury: Finding purpose by building prosthetics | Opinion

TemPO has taken on projects large and small, with teams of different sizes. Early on, they produced quite a few finger prostheses. On a grander scale, they’ve designed and are producing button-like devices that allow children with limited fine-motor skills to turn on their toys; a protective athletic face mask; and a canine-adapted wheelchair for dogs that have lost the use of their hind legs. They also built a custom-made prosthetic leg for Jack, a very energetic New Jersey pooch — an adventure they caught on film.

Letting engineering students see the impact of their work is part of TemPO’s power, said Temple junior Susan Oldfield, who knows firsthand the impact that ill health can have on a life. When she was 17, she caught the flu, which led to a debilitating migraine condition. For years, she couldn’t read or look at computer screens (her health has since improved).

“There are some things about being very, very sick that are universal, and one of those is the loss of agency,” said Oldfield, now 30, who next year will take the TemPO president’s reins from Rollins. “Everything about TemPO is about giving people agency again so they can do the things they want to do.”

Like Rollins, Yasmin Kennedy Johnson, 20, a sophomore and the club’s secretary, is an athlete who has taken her knocks.

“Ever since I was 5, I was doing cheering, basketball, snowboarding,” she said. “I play volleyball. I play rugby. My body has pretty quickly deteriorated. So making stuff that helps people not be in pain all the time is very appealing to me.”

Johnson has always been intrigued by problem-solving and building things, she said. And although she was accepted into the College of Engineering, as a freshman she nonetheless felt intimidated by her classmates, she said, “scared of all the big, smart people.”

But then she joined TemPO, and the once-scary, smart people became her colleagues and teammates, all of them bringing their own experiences and strengths to projects they enthusiastically collaborated upon.

“I’m a neuro-divergent woman of color in STEM, and I’m queer,” Johnson said. “I pretty much have every label that could be unorthodox, but I worked to get where I am.”

And next year, she’s slated to be TemPO’s vice president.

Last fall, TemPO’s membership grew from a new source: About 35 students from Rollins’ alma mater, Tower Hill School, signed up for the club, and a dozen of them committed to working on long-term projects. The Temple and Tower Hill students work on their own and in small groups, meeting weekly via Zoom.

Elizabeth Brown, Tower Hill’s director of STEM initiatives, said the TemPO students are attracted to the opportunity to do something that could make a difference.

“They knew what they were doing was going to benefit someone else,” said Brown. “That was a big driver for why they wanted to get involved.”

Tess Gattuso, 15, part of the dog-wheelchair team, joined TemPO to help animals and learn a bit more about engineering.

“This experience made me realize how interesting and hands-on engineering is,” she said, “and has [made] me to want to continue studying and working in an engineering-related field.”

As founder Rollins heads toward graduation and the world beyond, she knows she is leaving TemPO in able hands.

“It takes my breath away to see where I started and where I got to — over the hurdles, over the obstacles — and then bring it full circle to these last meetings,” the senior said. “Not only that, but there are these high schoolers. I see the same passion I had in them.”

Sometimes, the former goalie admitted, she tears up a bit.

“It’s really cool to see that passion ignite in a kid, and to see that I helped do that and the club helped do that,” she said. “It’s been really cool to see that passion grow.”