McDevitt Middle School Earns State Recognition for Urban Accessibility Effort with Project Sidewalk

Jul 01, 2026

The four students representing McDevitt Middle School at the state-wide competition. They are standing in front of their poster

In early May, middle-school teacher Ryan Hanlon contacted our lab about his 8th grade civics class and explained that one of his students found Project Sidewalk, and they were considering using it for their class project. As Ryan said in his email:

One of the goals of these action civics projects is to show students that they can work with those in power to make the changes they want to see in their community. Our class hopes that by using Project Sidewalk, they will be able to improve pedestrian traffic and safety in Waltham by presenting data to our City Council.

We were so excited by this because it's exactly how we feel as well! And we've increasingly been investing in how to make Project Sidewalk into a service learning platform. For example,

We are listed on SciStarter: https://scistarter.org/project-sidewalk
We successfully completed a great project with Girl Scouts in New Jersey, see ~45 sec video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyNOlSI_AQ&t=2169s
And Professor Yochai Eisenberg and his students are working on a service learning curriculum: https://accessiblecommunities.org/use-project-sidewalk/educators-2/

After some email discussion, we were able to setup and deploy Project Sidewalk in Waltham: https://sidewalk-waltham.cs.washington.edu/ and the students were off the races!

We have now found out that the students were just recognized by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education. From the Waltham Times article:

Four students from McDevitt Middle School have received recognition from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for their work on a student-led civics project addressing sidewalk accessibility in the city. Jacob Belding, Isaac Hayward, Dylan Johanson and Cameron Devine, all members of Ryan Hanlon’s eighth grade civics class, traveled to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate in Boston to present their project at a statewide civics competition.