Educators strive to retain science students with disabilities

Although many students wrestle with complicated concepts in science, that struggle takes on a whole new meaning for students with disabilities who are trying to learn the same things.

Imagine having a visual impairment and trying to identify a chemical that has no smell, or being in a wheelchair and trying to collect biological samples from the bottom of a lake. For many students with disabilities, such barriers simply outweigh any benefits they might associate with a future in science.

Now, a consortium of educators, scientists and student service providers — the Midwest Alliance in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (MIDWEST) — is starting to tackle that problem. With $3 million during five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF), experts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Northern Iowa hope to boost the numbers of students with disabilities entering and remaining in science fields. They say that as many as 400,000 Midwestern teenagers and young adults with disabilities could benefit from their efforts.

MIDWEST comes at a time when fewer students with disabilities are earning advanced science degrees. And of those who do go so far as to earn a doctorate, 27 percent have a hard time finding work, according to 2001 data from the NSF. In comparison, only 10 percent of doctoral degree holders who don’t have disabilities had trouble scoring jobs in the same year.

“The idea is that we will infuse resources and teaching tools at all levels, right from middle school to the university level, and will also help students transition more smoothly into the work force,” says Mark Leddy, a UW–Madison associate scientist in the Department of Communicative Disorders and a lead investigator of the MIDWEST initiative.

“Students with disabilities are naturally creative and are master problem-solvers as they constantly have to figure out how to negotiate their daily environment,” adds Leddy, who has a disability. “We want to help students with disabilities take ownership of their situation and advocate on their own behalf. Students need to know how to ask, ‘I need this chemistry lab bench modified,’ or ‘I need these engineering tools modified’ because right now many students don’t know they can do that.”

In collaboration with a network of national, regional and local experts, MIDWEST researchers are working with middle- and high-school teachers around the Midwest to help them better anticipate the needs of science students with disabilities. The project will create support and mentorship networks for students and their families, and will award grants and scholarships not only to students, but also to regional educators and care providers who want to promote student participation or make housing or classroom settings more “disability-friendly.” MIDWEST will also offer internship opportunities in university science and engineering laboratories and, to ease entry into the real world, will help new graduates secure paid internships at prestigious research venues such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Leddy additionally envisions the introduction of innovative learning tools into school and university classrooms. UW–Madison’s Biology New Media Center, for instance, last year developed the Z-Corp Three-Dimensional Printer, a gadget that can produce 3-D models of virtually anything on the planet, including animal skulls, bacterial organisms and DNA molecules. Leddy says the technology could dramatically improve a blind student’s ability to learn scientific ideas by allowing the student to work through the sensation of touch.

To cater to more severe disabilities such as cerebral palsy or quadriplegia, Leddy hopes students will benefit from ongoing efforts by the UW–Madison Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology, or UW-CREATe, which is designing new machines that aim to help students with disabilities participate more fully in daily academic life.

Says Amy Fruchtman, project manager and Wisconsin coordinator for MIDWEST, “At the end of the day what we’re really asking is: how can we help these students be more successful in scientific fields, so that they can persist in their academic programs to completion?”