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SPEAKER: Women with disabilities
in academic careers.
SHERYL BURGSTAHLER: I'm Sheryl
Burgstahler, PI and director
of Access Advance,
a project hosted
by the University
of Washington where
we are working to
increase the participation
and advancement of women with
disabilities in academic STEM
careers.
CECILIA ARAGON: My
name is Cecilia Aragon.
I'm a faculty member
at the University
of Washington in Seattle.
And I am a Latina and the
first Latina full professor
in the College of Engineering.
My disability occurred after I
had already been a professor.
SHIRI AZENKOT: My
name is Shiri Azenkot,
and I'm an associate
professor at Cornell Tech.
Having a disability has
given me a unique perspective
on problem solving.
I've had to learn
how to communicate
my needs to other people in a
way that is not intimidating.
I have a visual impairment.
It would really help me if
you could do the following.
ELAINE SHORT: My
name is Elaine Short.
I'm an assistant professor
at Tufts University
in the Computer
Science Department.
I have a rare form of muscular
dystrophy, an adult onset
form of muscular
dystrophy, which means
I have a mobility impairment.
For me right now,
the big challenges
are around travel and
also just generally sort
of physical
inaccessibility of spaces.
Do the automatic door openers
work on all the buildings?
Really being strategic
around what travel I do,
where I travel to, and
how I do travel so that I
am involved in my community.
One of the best places to
network is at grant meetings,
because it's all faculty
and it's often much easier
to get to DC for a
grant meeting than it
is to travel internationally
for a conference.
SHERYL:
How can departments
get started in welcoming
women with disabilities?
SHIRI : Step number one
is just education and awareness
and realizing that
there might be
faculty who have disabilities,
who have specific needs.
CECILIA: The
department chair
has to make a special effort to
make assistant professors feel
welcome, especially if they
have an invisible disability.
They often end up putting
in hours of extra work
just to be able to create
the illusion that they
are fully-abled.
If the disability services
office is funded centrally
and there is no cost
to the department,
then the department
chair thinks,
oh, I want my staff to be
as productive as possible
and there's no cost to me.
SHERYL: Explore
practices that can make faculty
careers more equitable for
women with disabilities
at uw.edu/doit/programs/advance.
SPEAKER: Access advance is
funded by the National Science
Foundation, grant numbers
HRD-2017017 and HRD-2017054.
Any questions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material
are those of the author
and do not necessarily
reflect the views
of the federal government.
Copyright 2022.
Permission is granted
to copy these materials
for educational
non-commercial purposes
provided the source
is acknowledged.
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