QL Plus

Injured veterans submit functional challenges to QL Plus, tasks they cannot perform because commercial prosthetics and VA programs produce devices for broad markets rather than for specific individual needs, so that engineering students at 25 partner universities design and build one-of-a-kind adaptive devices as senior capstone projects.

ENABLE Model location

• Builder-side Interventions → Design Accessible Experiences
• Builder-side Interventions → Develop Accessible Implementations

What it is

QL Plus, rebranded as Project S.E.R.V.E. (Student Engineering for Resilience of Veterans and Emergency Responders) in September 2025, is a McLean, Virginia-based nonprofit founded in 2009 by Jon Monett, a former U.S. Air Force officer and 26-year CIA veteran who seeded the program with a $500,000 personal investment to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.¹² The organization pairs injured veterans and first responders with university engineering teams who build custom assistive devices as senior capstone projects.

Veterans, called "Challengers," submit functional problems: specific activities or tasks they cannot perform because no available device addresses their injury. A QL Plus program manager vets each challenge and confirms it has no commercial solution. The challenge is assigned to a student engineering team at one of 25 partner universities, which spends an academic year with fall semester on design and spring on building and testing, producing a one-of-a-kind device. QL Plus covers all material costs, approximately $25,000 per project, and delivers the finished device to the veteran at no charge. Students receive course credit through the existing capstone structure.³⁴

The organization has completed roughly 50 to 60 projects per year across universities including Cal Poly SLO (the founding lab), Virginia Tech, Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado Boulder, San Diego State, George Mason, and the University of Dayton. Since 2009, it has served over 1,300 veterans and first responders, engaging more than 2,000 students.⁵ Completed devices include sport-specific prosthetics for surfing, sled hockey, and competitive bobsled; voice-controlled vehicle transmission systems; one-handed guitar pick attachments for prosthetic arms; wheelchair luggage carriers; automated fishing systems for veterans with limited hand function; and a head-switch-operated dice roller enabling tabletop game participation for quadriplegic veterans.⁶⁷

Why it matters

Ottobock, Ossur, and Hanger Clinic dominate the U.S. prosthetics market and engineer product lines around common amputation patterns at production scale. A below-knee running blade or microprocessor knee joint generates sales volume that justifies engineering and manufacturing investment. A prosthetic designed for a specific surf break, or a single-arm bobsled steering mechanism for one competitive para-athlete, does not. This is the structural outcome of manufacturing under commercial incentive. The VA's Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services provides "the most advanced medical devices and products that are commercially available," a scope that, by definition, excludes devices that do not yet exist commercially.⁸ The result is a structural gap at the tier between clinical prosthetics, which restore ambulation, grip, or basic function, and devices that restore participation in specific recreational, competitive, and daily-life activities that matter to individual veterans.

The market gap QL Plus occupies has deep structural roots. After World War II, the VA built one of the largest prosthetics systems in the world to serve a mass casualty population with similar injury profiles: amputations at standardized limb levels, treated through centralized clinical protocols.⁸ The commercial prosthetics industry grew alongside that system. Manufacturers supplied what the VA purchased in volume, and the VA purchased devices calibrated to clinical restoration for the broadest possible patient population. This alignment between federal procurement and commercial production established a default that has governed the field for eighty years: make what restores basic function for the largest number of patients, and leave everything else to custom fabricators or individual adaptation. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act extended public accommodation requirements but created no obligation for manufacturers to produce individualized goods. The Assistive Technology Act funds state AT programs but does not mandate custom device production. Federal law built a floor for access to existing products, not a structure for manufacturing what does not yet exist. Veterans of the post-9/11 wars, many surviving injuries that would have been fatal in earlier conflicts, encountered a prosthetics market whose production logic remained unchanged: manufacture what sells to a large population, not what one person requires.⁹ Adaptive sports prosthetics have historically occupied a market tier served by specialized fabricators at high cost, para-sport nonprofits building for specific communities, or nothing.

The Challenger model reverses a standard design dynamic. Commercial and VA-issued devices present veterans with available options, and veterans adapt to those options through user workarounds, switching to alternatives, or enduring the functional gap. QL Plus inverts this: the veteran defines the functional problem, and engineers solve the problem the veteran articulated. The organization has not published outcomes data, independent evaluations, or selection criteria for which veterans receive projects, so the degree to which this inversion holds through the full design process is undocumented.³⁴

Veterans who cannot access the program absorb the adaptation tax in three forms: paying a custom fabricator, abandoning the activity, or carrying the functional limitation permanently. QL Plus removes that tax for the veterans it serves. The organization's own leadership has acknowledged the disparity: "hundreds of thousands of veterans and first responders... still need our help."⁵ The gap between 1,300 served in 16 years and that stated scale is structural. Five full-time staff coordinating 25 universities and 50 to 60 projects annually operate at a fraction of the addressable need. FY2024 financials show expenses of $850,971 against revenues of $489,531, a deficit the organization covers through asset drawdown, with no government grants.¹⁰

Prosthetic socket overheating drives veterans to remove prosthetics during physical activity, reducing mobility and pushing them out of the activities the VA identifies as recovery factors. The VA's National Veterans Sports Programs and Special Events program exists because the department found that adaptive recreation reduces depression and PTSD severity, improves social connection, and lowers isolation risk in injured veterans, outcomes the VA's clinical programs alone do not reliably produce.¹¹ When the gap in individualized assistive devices forces a veteran to abandon surfing, competitive para-sport, or playing an instrument, the downstream effects are measurable: social isolation, loss of structure, and the psychological costs of an identity foreclosed by unavailable equipment rather than by the injury itself. The QL Plus cooling socket competition, won in 2025 by a Virginia Tech team, addressed a comfort barrier that commercial socket manufacturers had not resolved for active lower-limb amputees and that was directly limiting how long veterans could use their prosthetics during physical activity.¹²

The prototype-only model is the frontier's clearest structural limit. Each QL Plus device is built once for one person. The organization states that intellectual property rights typically belong to students and that patents are sometimes pursued for organizational sustainability, but no documented case exists in which a QL Plus prototype reached commercial manufacture or became available to other veterans with the same functional need.⁴ There is no documented maintenance or repair pathway once a device is delivered. The structural condition QL Plus responds to, the market gap between commercial prosthetics production and individualized functional need, remains in place after each project concludes.

Real-world examples

In the news

Program Gives Veterans With Disabilities Custom Devices at No Cost (March 2025)
-- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

• The VA featured QL Plus as a partner program delivering custom adaptive devices outside VA's standard benefit scope. The article notes QL Plus specifically targets challenges "not currently on the commercial market," situating the program within the gap between builder-side commercial production and individual veteran need. VA coverage across multiple years signals informal referral without formal government funding.

In the news

Custom Adaptive Devices Built for Veterans at No Cost (March 2026)
-- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

• A follow-up VA feature after QL Plus's rebranding to Project S.E.R.V.E. The coverage profiles the capstone model and individual veterans. The VA's repeated recognition of the program over multiple years documents an informal referral pipeline: the VA sends veterans to QL Plus for needs it cannot fulfill through its own procurement.

In the news

Central Coast engineering students invent device to help severely injured veteran (July 2019)
-- KCLU, NPR affiliate, Central Coast California

• Third-party reporting on Cal Poly students building devices for Taylor Morris, a Navy EOD officer who lost parts of all four limbs to an IED in Afghanistan in 2012. Students built an adaptive trailer hitch system and a prosthetic socket cooling device. Morris is quoted: "That's how you can tell the QL+ program really cares. They're not just getting a photo opp." One of the few independent, on-the-record accounts of both the device engineering process and a veteran's assessment.

• Taylor Morris, the Navy EOD officer whose IED injury in Afghanistan in 2012 resulted in partial loss of all four limbs, has had multiple devices built through Cal Poly's QL Plus lab. One team built an adaptive trailer hitch system enabling him to independently switch between three different trailer sizes using his single prosthetic hand. A second team built a prosthetic socket cooling system using an embedded Peltier network to manage heat during physical activity. Morris: "This definitely lightens the work load. It allows me to do a lot more."¹³¹⁴

• David Snypes Jr., an Army veteran, received the first one-armed bobsled steering mechanism through a Virginia Tech QL Plus team. The device enables competitive para-bobsled racing, a sport for which no commercial steering adaptation existed before the project.⁷

• Shane Heath, an Army veteran who lost his arm, received a guitar pick adapter built for his prosthetic arm, enabling him to play guitar. The functional gap was specific to one person's setup, the solution was achievable by engineering students, and no commercial product existed.⁷

• Virginia Tech engineering students won the 2025 QL Plus National Design Competition for a dual active/passive cooling system integrated into a prosthetic socket liner. The team, Reagan Green, Scott Mahaney, Daniel Rhodes, Alison Hunsberger, and Aleksandra Grodzki, produced a device addressing overheating in lower-limb amputees during physical activity, a documented barrier to prosthetic use. Whether the design proceeds to manufacture for broader distribution is not documented.¹²

• San Diego State University students built an automated push-button casting and reeling system for veterans with incomplete quadriplegia, enabling independent fishing. A separate SDSU team built a head-switch-operated automatic dice roller enabling tabletop game participation for quadriplegic veterans. Both devices were presented at SDSU's Design Day 2025.¹⁵

• Tyler Wilson, an Army veteran paralyzed after being shot, challenged University of Colorado Boulder students to design a collapsible wheelchair luggage carrier. Students built a device weighing 18 pounds and holding 50 pounds, tested across 160 trials with 30 subjects. A student on the team: "One of the biggest things I've learned is awareness of the everyday tasks those with physical disabilities must complete."¹⁶

• Sarah Frasier-Kim, an Army and Marine Corps double amputee, submitted multiple challenges to QL Plus. After participating as a Challenger, she enrolled in engineering at Rochester University, one of the few documented cases in which a veteran's participation in QL Plus changed their career direction.¹⁷

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at the design and development stage involves defining functional need from the veteran's own account of what they cannot do, then building to that specification:

• QL Plus intake asks veterans to describe what they want to do that they cannot do, rather than selecting from a device catalog, a design process that begins with user-defined function rather than available product lines.³
• "The criteria is that the solution must be one not currently on the commercial market." -- QL Plus project eligibility standard³
• "One of the biggest things I've learned is awareness of the everyday tasks those with physical disabilities must complete." -- CU Boulder student engineer¹⁶
• "So we'll give you nine months. But you've got to come up with a solution, build it, produce it and give it to the challenger." -- Jon Monett, QL Plus founder, on the capstone model's design-to-delivery obligation²

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect at the commercial design and production level involves designing for the broad market and treating individualized need as outside scope:

• "We don't build one-of-a-kind. Our R&D budget goes toward products we can sell at volume."
• "The VA will handle it. That's what the benefit system is for."
• "If there were a market for it, someone would have built it already."
• "We can accommodate most users with our standard configurations."
• "Custom fabrication is available through a private fabricator, but it's not covered."
• "Our warranty doesn't apply to modified or non-standard uses."

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the labor injured veterans carry when individualized assistive devices do not exist commercially and no program fills the gap:

• "I just stopped surfing after I came home. There's no foot for that. I looked."
• "I asked the VA and they said they cover what's commercially available. What I need isn't commercially available. So that was the end of that conversation."
• "The fabricator quoted me $8,000. That wasn't going to happen on a disability benefit."
• "I had someone drive me to the trailhead and then I waited while everyone else went up. Every time."
• "I've been doing it one-handed for two years. You figure out workarounds, but it takes twice as long and you drop things."
• "I filled out the application and never heard back. I assume they had more challengers than available projects that year."

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All observations occur within the context of adaptive assistive device design in the United States, where commercial prosthetics manufacturers and VA benefit programs address clinical restoration for large populations and leave individualized recreational and quality-of-life functional needs to nonprofit workarounds, custom fabricators, and patient endurance.

Footnotes

1. Cal Poly Alumni: Jon Monett ↩

2. Patch McLean: Jon Monett profile ↩ ↩²

3. Project S.E.R.V.E.: How It Works ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Podfeet Podcasts: CSUN 2025 QL Plus Interview ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Project S.E.R.V.E.: Rebrand Announcement, September 2025 ↩ ↩²

6. Cal Poly News: Students in Quality of Life Plus Lab ↩

7. Project S.E.R.V.E.: Featured Projects ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. VA Prosthetics and Sensory Aids Service ↩ ↩²

9. U.S. Veterans Magazine: Engineering a Difference ↩

10. CauseIQ: QL Plus Program Financials ↩

11. VA National Veterans Sports Programs and Special Events ↩

12. Project S.E.R.V.E.: Virginia Tech Design Competition 2025 ↩ ↩²

13. KCLU: Central Coast Engineering Students Invent Device ↩

14. Cal Poly News: Students in Quality of Life Plus Lab ↩

15. Project S.E.R.V.E.: SDSU Design Day 2025 ↩

16. CU Boulder Mechanical Engineering: Veterans Challenge CU Capstone Students ↩ ↩²

17. PIR.org: Quality of Life Plus Overview ↩