Partway through his hum bio studies, Scott Hornbeak had to scrap the plans he was making to study chimpanzees with Jane Goodall. In 1975, rebels kidnapped four research assistants—three of them Stanford students—from her famous fieldwork site in Tanzania, and the flow of American and European students and researchers to the Gombe Stream Research Center halted abruptly.
Hornbeak felt he was a "lost soul" as a junior—until his adviser suggested he volunteer at what was then called the Children's Hospital at Stanford and explore an alternative interest in physical therapy. There he hit on a career that has made a difference in the lives of thousands.
Hornbeak directs the Orthotics and Prosthetics Program at Cal State-Dominguez Hills, the only education program of its kind in California. "A person who's never worn a brace—they get up out of their wheelchair and walk for the first time. I never get tired of that even after 30 years," says Hornbeak. The profession has turned out to be a perfect fit, combining the skills of an artist, an engineer and a psychologist.
Prosthetics is a growing field, Hornbeak says, not so much because of returning war veterans (historically, an incentive to advances in artificial limbs), but because an aging and increasingly obese population has greater health problems. The program expects to graduate 48 students this year.
In the classrooms and labs at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach, prosthetics students work with people who have lost a limb. They craft each device to the individual's body, fitting it with their hands and walking with the patient to determine how well it works. Then they go back to the lab to make improvements: a leg with a smoother gait or a more comfortable fit. Several of the students themselves walk with prostheses.
"We don't treat people in isolation," says Hornbeak, who holds an MBA from UCLA and formerly was a vice president at NovaCare, a rehabilitation services company. "Thirty years ago, this field was widget-makers. We not so much treated people as made devices." Now, he says, his students learn to communicate with patients, helping them deal with loss and find a support system. "They try to assess not just physical capabilities but psychological motivations."
Hornbeak remembers a Stanford seminar on population issues with professors Paul Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, in which they decried a future of haves and have-nots. "There was this goal then in Human Biology of going out and making a difference, and I think that has stayed with me all these years," says Hornbeak, who lives with his wife and two sons in Orange County. "That has landed right here in this department."
