As part of The Southpaw Promise, we promise you superior quality and craftsmanship and to build products that are uniquely guaranteed to last.

One way we actively work to fulfill our promise is by working together with Professor Rebecca Blust from the University of Dayton. As the Executive Director of the Innovation Center; Associate Professor; Frank M. Tait Endowed Chair in Engineering, she oversees a class of engineering students that are part of a decade-plus partnership with our company.

The University’s Innovation Center works to bridge the gap between academics and its students’ professional careers by giving them industry-relevant hands-on experience. Southpaw offers them the experience of working with us to improve one of our products, testing their solution and presenting it to our designers. Often, the work these students create becomes part of our revised product line.

“These students have 16 years of theoretical experience, but the answers for them have always been in the back of the book,” said Rebecca. “Alex Moore (President of Southpaw) meets directly with them and shows them the product they will be working on. He’s great at showing them the issue they will work to solve and the constraints they’re under. And somehow, he always keeps things very open-ended.”

The students get to work directly with Southpaw operators on the shop floor. There, they learn how to ask questions that lead them to their solution. Past projects have had the team work on selecting materials that increase the quality of our products while reducing costs as well as shipping solutions that protect our products while they’re shipped.

The opportunity to get out of the theoretical space and do hands-on work with an actual product that will be used by therapists and their clients? That’s a major confidence builder for the Innovation Center students. It also gives them what Rebecca calls a “star story,” which is a key point for them to discuss in future job interviews. Unlike many of their fellow students who are newly entering the field, they have actual work for Southpaw, a company that is a leader in the field of sensory integration products.

They’ve also made a believer out of Rebecca, who said, “It’s always a feel-good call when we hear from Southpaw. They’re amazing.”

Currently, the team is working on refining our Nessie Support Structure. We look forward to discovering what they’ve learned.

At Southpaw, the safety and dependability of our products is of the highest importance. That’s why we work with these engineers of tomorrow to help design and test our products, which are always manufactured by hand in Dayton, Ohio.

Our promise remains to create products that are uniquely guaranteed to last – “Wherever, forever.”