About eight years ago, Brian White lost his leg in a work accident.
"The machine basically caught my boot and started pulling me into the machine. It didn't stop until it had completely taken my leg off," he says. "There was so little muscle left in my residual limb that I would probably never walk again."
He did walk again, and now he wants to help others do the same.
"I was very depressed at the time," he says. "I could have easily given up and been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I think meeting a good practitioner and him working hard with me to achieve my goals is the reason I'm doing every thing I am today."
That inspired him to go back to school at Middle Georgia State University.
He is now in the Masters of Science in Prosthetics and Orthotics program at Georgia Tech and will graduate next May.
It will be his latest accomplishment in a journey with many hurdles, but he says now the program giving him this new direction in life is the one in need of support.
"They just kept repeating that it was deactivation, not termination," he said.
Georgia Tech officials recently notified students that the program would no longer accept new applicants for the next two years, while they decide on its future.
White says they cited low student satisfaction.
"All 28 students in the program are satisfied and have pretty much put up a united front to say this program needs to stay," says White.
They've created multiple social media accounts and written emails to the college asking them to reconsider.
White says Tech also told his class that the high professor turnover was a factor.
Chris Fink, a former professor with the program, says that is misleading because he and several other professors didn't seek other opportunities. He says they were recruited.
"The program found itself at the mercy of its own success," Fink says. "The faculty they did lose, most if not all, have gone on to more prominent positions in the field."
White says he and his classmates will still get their degrees, but this fight isn't for them.
"We're doing research on a powered knee and ankle that could change the lives of amputees," White says. "If this program is not there, they're not going to have the practitioner side along with the research."
He says, as an amputee, he knows that many insurance companies will not cover the latest prosthetic models without proper research to back its necessity.
White says the program at Tech provides much of that research.
According to Georgia Tech's website, the program was the first of its kind in the United States and the driving force behind changes in curriculum requirements in 2013.
It is the only accredited program currently in Georgia and one of only 13 in the country.
13WMAZ reached out to Georgia Tech for comment and received this statement:
"Georgia Tech has suspended admission of students to its Master of Science degree program in prosthetics and orthotics as the Institute examines future pathways for the program. Georgia Tech, like other institutions in the University System of Georgia, frequently reviews its degree programs to ensure that each is properly staffed and aligned with the overall institutional goals and mission of the Institute. Instruction will continue for the 14 students currently enrolled in the degree program. Georgia Tech remains committed to the scientific research that supports the development of prosthetics and orthotics."