Universal Design Conference Shapes Ideas for Delta Program
Katherine Friedrich

Over 11 percent of the U.S. undergraduate population in 2004 had some form of disability, according to the National Science Foundation. To brainstorm ways to include disability awareness in CIRTL programs and courses, Delta Program associate director Christine Pfund attended the AccessSTEM Capacity Building Institute in Seattle in January.

The event was sponsored by the University of Washington 's Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology Center . One of DO-IT's goals was to bring together representatives of diversity-oriented NSF programs and disability experts - including faculty and graduate students with disabilities.

Since methods that work to include women and ethnic minority students are not necessarily effective for students with disabilities, participants compared notes on their experiences to identify the best practices.

Pfund described DO-IT's resources as "phenomenal." "They have so many ready-to-use resources that could easily be put into some of our programming, to train future faculty to think about universal design. early on," she said.

"Universal design" is one of DO-IT's main areas of interest. This concept is the principle of integrating people with disabilities into everyday life by making building and product designs more user-friendly for everyone. Universal design is closely linked to CIRTL's definition of Learning-through-Diversity .

The ideas Pfund developed through participating in the Institute include:

1. Encouraging faculty to work with students with disabilities as part of the broader impacts portion of their grants.
2. Adding more material on students with disabilities to the Diversity in the College Classroom course.
3. Integrating disability issues into more of the current Delta and CIRTL literature.
4. Increasing the accessibility of the Delta Program web site.

Faculty or program leaders who are interested in DO-IT's resources can visit the AccessSTEM web site for more information. The site is easily searchable by type of disability and by academic discipline, among other categories.

DO-IT is the lead agency in the Northwest Alliance for Access to STEM. Similar alliances exist in other parts of the country; one of them, the MIDWEST Alliance , has a collaborative relationship with CIRTL and Delta.

March 8, 2007

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