April 2022 Meeting

Meeting Date
  • Campus Wide Issues Brainstorm
    • What current or emerging issues exist?
    • What topics could be brought to a council meeting?
  • Discussion
    • Parking
      • Has come up frequently in CfDC meetings
    • Proposing requirement for faculty supervisors related to disability awareness
      • GEO is considering asking for a mandatory training for faculty supervisors
        • GEO has been considering disability issues a lot as they prepare for next round of contract bargaining
      • Reasoning
        • Grad students are supervised by faculty members with little to no experience working with disabled people, little to no awareness about disability
      • Concerns
        • Faculty are already required to do a lot of trainings, some of which don’t really accomplish much
        • Disability is such a broad topic that it may not be easily covered in a training, since every disabled student has different wants/needs
          • What is the optimally effective way to achieve that?
      • A broad awareness raising training may still be helpful as a start
        • People see the need for baseline ADA knowledge, along the lines of OSHA, Title 9, etc.
        • A band aid training until we get a more centralized solution
        • May want to reach out to the Center for Academic Innovations about a Teach-In about Accessibility.
      • Other Thoughts
        • Law school does an IT accessibility training for all law faculty and staff, which has created a broader conversation about disability at the law school
        • Existing ADA Materials to build off of
          • ADA office has some of those
          • Currently we don’t know of any MyLinc courses about this
          • Disability Coordinators have done some trainings for individual units
          • OIE site has some, currently hoping to launch a new ECRT website with resources
    • Centralizing accommodations processes for students and employees
      • Thinking of this in considering the potential for future trainings since the current system is so decentralized
        • For grad students, one supervisor is usually fully in charge of your accommodations/fate
        • For grad student employees, two totally different systems for class and work accommodations
      • GEO has thought about asking about this in the past
        • Someone at the graduate student union at University of Massachusetts Amherst (where they do have a centralized accommodations process) said they're currently trying to undo that centralization because the University doesn't have capacity to do everything
      • Ensure UM has the staff, funding, resources to make this feasible
    • Hiring and accommodations for post-doctoral fellows
      • Recent issues with being unable to hire because the institution was unable to provide necessary accommodations
    • What is the accommodations explanation for freshman an incoming students? If it’s inadequate, how can we increase knowledge?
      • Student IDEA board considered this and found that information is not frequently/consistently disseminated to incoming students
      • Undergraduate admissions are working on changing this
        • Stephanie Riegle is working on this within that office
    • Many graduate students and post-docs (and faculty) are interested in mentorship from other disabled people who are further along in their careers
      • Ex. want advice on how/if to disclose, how to contextualize disability in a cover letter
      • UM would benefit from a mentorship program like this
      • Council could put together a list of potential mentors
    • Any updates on Work Connections and its practices of denying accommodations?
      • None from today’s meeting
    • Disability community and cultural spaces
      • Disability Cultural Center updates will be shared at a future meeting
      • SSD identified a potential space for SSD services; DCC would need to be a different and separate space
        • Compliance spaces (SSD) and celebratory/community spaces (DCC) should be different
    • Need for a formalized academic program in disability culture/disability studies
      • Robert Adams may be working on that
    • Higher level administration doesn’t have a good system for dialoguing with people raising accommodations issues
      • They’re reactive but not communicative
      • Connects with the decentralization discussed earlier and in other parts of university accommodations system
      • Facilities frequently charged with solving these problems (especially physical accessibility and audio problems)
        • Could go to technology services, who have sound techs, among other resources
        • In the future, people can reach out to tech services about acoustics issues
          • Contact Monika Dressler and Karl Aldag, LSA Technology Services
      • Acoustics at the university are generally poor
    • Student IDEA Board Updates
      • Dilip is leaving for University of Toledo
      • Rob Sellers replacement search is underway, going well
      • New ODEI hire Debbie Willis has done work with Rackham committee on disabled students
      • Winter McLeod is a graduate student part time staff doing a deep dive into IDEA board recommendations
  • Upcoming Events
  • Ideas for Future CfDC Meetings
    • ADA Baseline training review
    • DCC updates
      • Concern that if SSD gets granted the space they are considering, UM may say there isn’t a need for a DCC
      • Student IDEA Board Report has more information about DCC
    • Council can put together a list of potential mentors
    • Update on a formalized academic program on disability culture/studies
    • Digital accessibility policy/standard practice guide
      • Phil Deaton will have updates in the next few months