DSST senior turns classroom opportunities into real-world impact

Most high school seniors spend their summers working part-time jobs or catching up on sleep. Angel Cavazos, 17, spent his summer designing a tool to help people with quadriplegia eat on their own.

Cavazos, a senior at DSST: College View High School, and his fellow Campos Scholars partnered with Craig Hospital this past summer to create a utensil holder for people with quadriplegia at a fraction of the cost of commercial adaptive devices.

Photo of the team's first prototype

This was the team's capstone project for Campos Scholars, the Campos Foundation's four-year engineering college readiness program for first-generation DSST students. Each summer, scholars take on college-level coursework, hands-on training in tools like 3D printing and a real-world engineering challenge with an industry or community partner. This year, Craig Hospital, one of the nation's leading rehabilitation hospitals, asked scholars to design solutions that help people with disabilities complete everyday tasks more independently.

The team started by researching what already existed.

"We first scoured the internet for any already existing utensils, and we found only a couple of options that were really expensive," Cavazos said. "We then brainstormed multiple ideas until we decided on making a glove with a 3D-printed holder in order to ensure that the utensil wouldn't move, but would also be cheap and effective."

Case designed to hold product

None of this happened by accident. Cavazos traces the foundation of his engineering mindset back to a freshman-year introduction to engineering course at DSST.

"I took my first steps into what engineering is," he said. "I would go over projects where I had to use my creativity in order to find the solution and problem-solve with my classmates."

That early experience of sitting with a challenge and working through it alongside others is precisely what prepared him to walk into a hospital partnership and deliver.

What makes Angel's story especially compelling is that his growth at DSST has never been one-dimensional. As a Student Ambassador and a Campos Scholar, he has built a network that stretches well beyond the walls of College View.

"I got to meet such amazing people, from classmates to professors, and have developed many connections with them," he said. "I was also able to gain a lot of experience when it comes to interacting with people, which is something I used to have difficulty with."

Project presentation

Angel chose DSST in part because he saw a school that took the whole student seriously, not just the scientist or the engineer, but the person.

"Even if DSST is a STEM-focused district, the arts are still not forgotten and showcased, which just shows that students' interests are not forgotten, which is highly important," he said.

To any eighth grader standing at the crossroads of high school choice, Angel has a message worth hearing.

"High school has been such an amazing experience for me, and while it was a change from middle school, I have loved every second of it," he said. "In high school, you are given a lot of freedom to express yourself and to explore the paths you want to take in life — and the best way to go about it is to reach out and ask for help. Asking for help is never wrong, so don't be afraid to ask for it."

And if there is one thing Angel wants the world to know, it's this: he didn't get here alone. "I am very grateful for all of the support I've gotten from the Campos Foundation and my school," he said. "I don't think I would be in the position I'm in right now without them."

A glove. A hospital partnership. A senior who showed up ready to solve a real problem for real people. That's what DSST looks like in action.