- Richard Ladner
- http://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/ladner
- Professor Emeritus
- AccessComputing
- https://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/
- University of Washington
- Brianna Blaser
- Project Manager
- AccessComputing
- https://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/
- University of Washington
- Sheryl Burgstahler
- https://sites.uw.edu/sherylb/
- Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
- AccessComputing
- https://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/
- University of Washington
Public Discussion
Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex
Brianna Blaser
Associate Director, AccessADVANCE and AccessComputing
Welcome! AccessComputing is an NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance. We work to increase the participation of people with disabilities in computing education and careers. We serve as a national resource related to disability and accessibility in computing. If you are a student with a disability studying computing, join the AccessComputing Team to participate in a mentoring community and become eligible for other opportunities. Educators and employers can participate in one of our Communities of Practice.
Shane Woods
Sheryl Burgstahler
Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
For those of you who encourage other marginalized groups to pursue computing degrees and careers, do you need any assistance in making sure individuals in those groups who also have disabilities are adequately served by your project? We can help you do that. Check out our website AccessComputing to begin exploring relevant issues.
Shane Woods
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Welcome to our video "Mentoring Students with Disabilities in Research Experiences." The three student highlighted in the video did 10 week summer research experiences run by the Computing Research Association's Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program. They each had individual faculty mentors and were part of their research groups for the summer. In the video, they give advice about how mentors can be helpful to students with disabilities in their groups. We hope you enjoy the video.
Shane Woods
Marcia Gumpertz
This is an inspiring project! I am so glad to see it, and the students are terrific spokespeople for the project and for students with disabilities. I have lifelong hearing loss, and know how underrepresented hard of hearing and deaf people are in professional careers. Seeing the deaf student presenter communicating so eloquently about her project and the advice she would give to mentors just about brought tears to my eyes.
Shane Woods
Brianna Blaser
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
I was lucky enough to meet Emilia on one of my visits to Gallaudet before the pandemic. She is a very impressive young woman.
Sheryl Burgstahler
Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
It is good to see these talented students have opportunities to participate in these ways!
Folashade Solomon
Senior Researcher
I love to see the students speaking for themselves about what they have learned. The students appeared to have in-depth experiences and sharing meaningful suggestions for how to work with students with disabilities. Can you share what they learned and experienced in the Computing Research Association's Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU)? What are some of your project impacts?
Brianna Blaser
Tracey Sulak
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Hi Folashade. The CRA DREU program has been in existence for at least 20 years. It was originally focused on women in computing, but several years ago it was expanded to other minoritized groups. This article is from a few years ago but explains some of its success. Working with the DREU program has been a very successful relationship. The DREU program provides an excellent scaffolding for mentors and undergraduates to work together. Student progress through reporting milestones from creating a website about their research project, updating the site like a lab book, and writing a final report. Many of these experiences have led to actual publications.
Shane Woods
Folashade Solomon
Brianna Blaser
Associate Director, AccessADVANCE and AccessComputing
Several students have written about their DREU experiences for our newsletter. You might find some of these interesting.
Shane Woods
Folashade Solomon
Shad Wachter
Thank you for your presentation. As a father of a child with autism, I often think about her future and wonder what supports will be available for her if and when she goes to college. Learning about programs like this gives me hope for her future. Keep up the good work.
Brianna Blaser
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Hi Shad, One thing that is happening in industry is the development of inclusive hiring programs. Here are examples from Microsoft and Google. There is also an annual event called Autism at Work Summit. I think it may have been put on hold because of the pandemic.
Shad Wachter
Sheryl Burgstahler
Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
Yes, you have reasons to be hopeful. To an increasing degree disability is considered a diversity issue and, like for other marginalized groups, more programs are available to address the needs of students with disabilities and fully include them in mainstream opportunities.
Jamie Bell
Project Director
Thank you for portraying this project through the voices of the participants and for us a taste of the STEM content they are working in. The links to the website, newsletter and other materials are helpful as well. It's great to hear the students' advice of others involved in or planning to work in this area. As the DREU program seems well established, have you also been doing research (or evaluation) on what is generalizable and/or scalable from your findings?
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Thanks for the note. The DREU program is evaluated by the Computing Research Association's Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP). They have disseminated a number of reports over the years about the DREU program. Here is one report about the impact of undergraduate research. AccessComputing does its own evaluation on the students that we funded, but that evaluation is for internal improvement, not for publication. One reason we work with DREU is because they have a proven record of success over many years.
Shane Woods
Jamie Bell
Project Director
Thank you. Great to hear that you are conducting both formative and summative evaluation. Is my memory correct that your work is also part of the NSF INCLUDES portfolio of projects?
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Sheryl Bugstahler is leading an INCLUDES project that is helping all INCLUDES projects be more accessible and welcoming for individuals with disabilities.
Jamie Bell
Toby Baker
As an co-presenter, educator and adult with a learning disability, thank you for this program. More students with disabilities should be in college taking STEM courses and graduating. My dissertation research focused on SWDs and higher education faculty training as many post-secondary students do not receive their appropriate accommodations. your program includes SWDs in computing!
Brianna Blaser
Associate Director, AccessADVANCE and AccessComputing
Toby, your work sounds very interesting - I plan to look it up. We always love connecting with others working with students with disabilities.
Sheryl Burgstahler
Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
Thanks for your support of our work!
Nicole Freidenfelds
This seems like a fantastic project - thanks for sharing.
I'm curious - how do you recruit students for your program?
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Hi Nicole. Our project, AccessComputing, maintains a group of about 550 students with disabilities from around the nation. We advertise this opportunity to them. In addition, the DREU program itself advertises broadly to computing departments nationwide. Their advertising stresses the need for students from minoritized groups including students with disabilities. Quite often a student with a disability that we don't know about applies to the DREU program. We invite those students to join AccessComputing. In 2020, when these internships were remote, a large percentage of the students who participated in the DREU program had a disability.
Shane Woods
Brianna Blaser
Associate Director, AccessADVANCE and AccessComputing
We recruit students for the AccessComputing team by reaching out to faculty and advisors in computing departments as well as disability services professionals. We also regularly participate in events like this one or the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing to spread awareness.
If you know students with disabilities studying computing fields, invite them to join the AccessComputing Team.
Shane Woods
Shane Woods
Senior Director, STEM Center of Excellence
Such meaningful work in bridging the gap for those who may not have felt STEM was for them. Do the participants get a badge or certificate of completion they can add to their CV, Resumes or profiles like LinkedIn that speaks to potential recruiters?
Richard Ladner
Professor Emeritus
Students get $7,000 for a 10 week internship. Like any internship it can be added to a resume. The internship is research which is very relevant when applying to grad school. DREU students are more likely to be successful in grad school than students who haven't done the DREU program.
Shane Woods
Sheryl Burgstahler
Director, DO-IT and Accessible Technology Services
This experience is definitely CV-worthy, along with other opportunities they can take part in as part of AccessComputing. We also provide participant with assistance/feedback in creating/updating their CVs and, if they take us up on the offer, we help them document such experiences.
Shane Woods