Thank you so much Cali. We will disseminate our findings. Let us keep in touch.

Lisette, Great points! Indeed, more support is needed for student transitions. NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM is building an Alliance for enhancing communication and collaboration among institutions of higher education, industry, government, national labs, and local communities to address the needs of students with disabilities in STEM disciplines. Our goal is to have employers participating in a variety of activities, including hiring students.

While the transition from high school to college is not a primary focus of our Alliance, many of our institutes of higher education have shared that they are interested in recruiting high school students with disabilities and learning about ways to support local high schools. The Alliance members have a lot of expertise in this area, and we are learning from one another all the time. We are so fortunate for this opportunity to learn and grow together.

Agreed - postsecondary transition is critical, because students with disabilities transition to college programs at lower rates. Our Alliance includes community colleges, too, to increase persistence through Associate's degrees and transition to the workforce or Bachelor's degrees, and our Bridge Mentoring model across campuses provides opportunities for faculty advising, peer-to-peer support, and business networking through on-campus and online activities. At OSU, we have developed a partnership with JP Morgan Chase, which has built an internship pipeline for Work-Based Learning that may lead to employment, and we are forging a partnership with Southwest Airlines, which also hosts internship opportunities nationwide. The National Alliance also includes many other industry partners with the same goal. While access is the first key step, as you noted, our alliance aims to increase successful transition to the workforce, and we will be studying the mentoring intervention alongside other variables to find factors that are positively correlated with advanced degree and employment outcomes. You can learn more about our studies on the NSF Award Abstract: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_I... and our project website: https://tapdintostem.org/

Agreed!

Hello Sheryl, I have a project for visual impairers student that I would love to share with you.  I will follow up via email.

Full disclosure, these 2 projects are  NOT currently funded by an NCLUDES award but I have been a CO-PI of two INCLUDES awards.

1. This is Das, Meenakshi master thesis focused on “Accessible Computer Science for K-12 Students with Disabilities”: http://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/7637

The references include few of the related published papers

2. These are two papers related with the second project “Developing A Multimodal Platform to Teach Mathematics to Students with Vision-Impairment” I would like to share:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-78095-1_10

https://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=spwid_2019_1_10_80021

This project was focused initially on students but now we are also working on making it accessible, as well, for teachers with disabilities.

Looking forward to hear about other projects that sustain the inclusiveness of students and educators with disabilities and I am, as always, open for collaborations!

Karen, great questions. We have a backbone and team structure that brings the hubs together regularly and the full alliance through webinars and annual events. Each hub has a research project and the backbone also collects data pertaining to internships, community-engaged learning, undergraduate research, mentoring, and other types of early stage work. We will be be publishing and sharing products. Based on the discussion and interest from this opportunity, we have a quarterly e-newsletter. If you would like to be added to it, please email me - Alexis Petri, petria@umkc.edu. Thank you. 

Thank you for your response.  I would like to receive quarterly newsletters and will email.

Sharing results across hubs is so important and quite pragmatic--it's informative and expedient to learn what is working and to share challenges and solutions.  The team backbone sounds critical for enabling each hub to engage their communities but also to collect and share data across hubs...and, at some point, with those of us external to the project.  We could learn a great deal from your work. Best wishes! 

Thank you for sharing. I agree and hope DEI includes people with disabilities too. 

Agreed. We can all play a role in our units and campuses to make sure that disability is included as one diversity area to be addressed AND that within diversity efforts for other marginalized groups, people with disabilities who also members of those groups are fully included and the accessibility of activities and resources that result from these efforts are fully accessible to individuals with a wide variety of disabilities.

Thank you for your questions and your interest. There will be more opportunities for other stakeholders to onboard. Please email me (I serve as the alliance backbone) Alexis Petri petria@umkc.edu. I will add you to our quarterly newsletter where we share opportunities and news. Students participate in mentoring that is designed to help empower them and facilitate early career building such as internships and undergraduate research. These types of opportunities help students explore their interests, build their networks, and keep motivated.

Catherine,

As Alexis points out, the Hubs were established based on earlier work, such as leading alliances funded by the NSF Research in Disabilities Education (RDE) program. The NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM Alliance and the Hubs aspire to create strong and impactful partnerships from various sectors to develop sustainability plans.

The Alliance website includes a map showing the Hub locations. Each Hub is leading a research project, and many of the projects are Alliance-wide. The following websites include a description of research activities for each Hub:

1. Islands – University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
2. Midwest – University of Missouri-Kansas City
3. Mountain – Northern Arizona University
4. Northeast – The Ohio State University
5. South East – Auburn University
6. West Coast – University of Washington

Alexis - so appreciate your answer and your focus on the overall alliance (in healthy tension/balance with the midwest hub). Will be excited to watch this work as it continues to deepen. The collective impact work is so critical and so complicated, especially as efforts present to stitch together centers of excellence. 

100 percent! Thank you.

Thank you! 

Dear Rochelle,

Thank you for the candid comments very similar to the comments I heard from the many young people with disabilities I mentored over the years.  I also feel sometimes alone in settings where I am the only disabled faculty so I can’t agree more with the need of breaking barriers for the inclusion of PWD in all aspects of our society. Looking forward to hear more from you.  

Rochelle, thank you for your comment. I hope that we can help make it easier for people with disabilities to discuss their needs and help other colleges and universities increase their efforts. Sometimes I think the idea of a tipping point has a lot of merit. If we continue to connect all of the great work that is being done and continue to come together, eventually things will change. Please contact me at petria@umkc.edu so that I can add you to our quarterly mailing list. There may be opportunities to connect that will interest you and where you will not be the only person with a disability. - Alexis

Thanks Lynn! I enjoyed watching your video (narrated by a student!) about the N3 project. I'm happy to hear that you're interested in the activities of the Alliance.