The Ripple Effect – Creating a Culture of Inclusion in STEMM

The STEMM pipeline can be a lonely and turbulent path for diverse and underrepresented students, faculty, and professionals. Disability is the largest minority group, which intersects with all other identities, but is often overlooked in efforts to diversify STEM and Medicine (STEMM).¹ Significant barriers to disability inclusion and disclosure contribute to a lack of role models and mentors and prevent many disabled students and professionals from feeling welcome in STEMM fields.²

“Disability is the essenceof diversity, by definition. It runs across race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomics, culture and the most important thing, it’s the only minority group anyone can join at any time, which makes it unique.”
Jonathan Kaufman³

Conversations about disability open doors to meaningful change by creating diverse role models and advocates, reconsidering who can be a scientist, and teaching about accessibility to impact engineering innovation. In this Inclusive Teaching series, Whiting Instructional Designer Sara Shunkwiler has shared her own evolution from hiding a disability to becoming a frequent presenter on accessibility in STEMM and 2024 Teach Access Fellow. Prior articles are linked below and explore disability terminology, ableism, and the challenges of disability disclosure due to ongoing stigma and bias. The series also explored solutions including Universal Design for Learning, math accessibility, and humanizing online learning because research and lived experience consistently demonstrate that disability inclusion truly benefits everyone.⁴

Faculty play a key role in student success and development of an inclusive engineering mindset, however, 60 percent of students in HigherEd do not disclose a disability impacting their learning due to ableism and stigma.⁵

A more inclusive engineering future for everyone begins with an inclusive education today. ⁶

Equitable access to technology, products, and services is essential for disabled people to fully participate in society. Current systems and product development efforts often fail to consider the needs of disabled users or involve disabled innovators in the solutions that would enable them to be successful and included.⁷

Employers and government agencies struggle to find graduates familiar with accessibility who can address disability in design.⁸ Teach Access is a nonprofit focused on eliminating this skills gap and creating a workforce literate in accessible technology through partnership with HigherEd, industry, and disability advocacy groups.

Why Teach Accessibility?

• 27% of the public is disabled
• Accessible technology is a market differentiator
• Current technology excludes disabled people
• <3% of engineering and computing courses reference accessibility
• Proven industry demand for accessibility awareness and skills
• 93% of industry leaders say demand for accessibility skills is rising

Teaching faculty and staff about accessibility and how to create accessible course content is an ongoing initiative at CTLD that supports all students by increasing educational effectiveness and reducing the need for accommodation. Teaching students about accessibility supports their educational success, while also creating an inclusive mindset and marketable skills that impact the future STEMM workforce. Collaborating with faculty, staff, and students creates a ripple effect with far-reaching impacts throughout the STEMM pipeline, from PreK-12 education through ultimate product or service delivery and use.¹⁰

Our team at Whiting is partnering with Program Chair Patrick Binning and numerous faculty, industry partners, and disability advocacy groups to teach students about accessibility in the Space Systems Engineering (SSE) Program. SSE Faculty Brian Bauer, Alexa Valdez, and Mario Lento are allies who frequently join in outreach as presenters on disability inclusion. Alexa, a graduate of the SSE program and engineer at Raytheon Technologies, now teaches with SSE Program Manager for Academics, Will Devereaux, and Richard Anderson, both of JHU APL. Theirs is the initial course in the online master’s program and sets an inclusive tone for incoming students. Brian, Mario, and Aaron Rogers lead a large group of guest lecturers in the subsequent two courses, where students and faculty had asked how to better support disabled peers and colleagues. All three courses now teach students about the accessible technology skills gap and how to incorporate accessibility in their course project deliverables and workplaces.

Conversations about disability can be uncomfortable but are vital to changing the narrative for disabled faculty, staff, and students.¹¹ Sara frequently joins SSE faculty at office hours to open up the conversation with students about disability inclusion in STEMM and encourage and empower students to seek the support they need for success. You can learn more about disability inclusion and initiatives in the SSE program in the magazine’s digital edition and prior articles in this series.

Call to Action – Creating Ripples

We all create ripples, whether we are consciously aware of our impact or not.

• Whiting’s Center for Teaching and Learning Design (CTLD) offers training and support for instructors on inclusive teaching practices and accessible content creation. You can join the conversation at the Fall Faculty Meeting workshop on October 8, onsite at JHU APL or on Zoom.
• Teach Access has numerous free resources for teaching about accessibility in a wide variety of subject areas through the curriculum repository, online courses, and faculty grants.
• AstroAccess, and similar disability advocacy groups, provide models for disability inclusion in STEMM through outreach like the Haughton Mars Project & AstroAccess partnership.
• Learn more about Teach Access, AstroAccess, and teaching accessibility to faculty and students at the Faculty Forward Academy workshop on Creating a Culture of Inclusion in STEMM, November 12 on Zoom. Register at the Faculty Forward website.
• Learn more about why accessibility matters and how you can make an impact in the prior article on Humanizing Online Learning. The digital edition includes a candid video conversation between SSE faculty Brian Bauer, Center for Staff Life Design Learning Engineer Kelly Cooney, and Whiting instructional designer Sara Shunkwiler on their shared story and impact.

Create your own ripples by becoming aware of disability inclusion, joining the conversation, and taking action. AstroAccess says it best, “If we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible.”

Resources

• • AstroAccess – Nonprofit promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration
  • Teach Access – Nonprofit working to close the accessible technology skills gap
    • Why Teach Accessibility? Fact Sheet
    • Accessible Technology Skills Gap

Inclusive Teaching Series Faculty Forward Magazine Articles

1. Inclusive Teaching – An Introduction to Terminology
2. Inclusive Teaching – Disability as Diversity – Includes the challenges of disclosure in STEMM
3. Inclusive Teaching – Universal Design for Learning
4. Inclusive Teaching – Math Accessibility – Includes workshop recordings and slides for the 2-part series on speaking math accessibly and accessible equation creation
5. Inclusive Teaching – Humanizing Online Learning – Includes a candid conversation on humanizing the course development process for everyone with Instructional Designer Sara Shunkwiler, SSE Faculty Brian Bauer, and Learning Engineering Kelly Cooney from JHU’s Center for Staff Life Design.

Numerical References:

1. (National Academies, 2023a)
2. (National Academies, 2023b; Yerbury & Yerbury, 2021)
3. (Source America, 2020)
4. (National Academies, 2024)
5. (Killpack & Melon, 2016, Mamboleo, Dong, & Fais, 2020; Newman, et al., 2021)
6. (Atadero, et al., 2018; Royal Academy of Engineering, 2018)
7. (Teach Access, 2021, 2023, 2024)
8. (Teach Access, 2021, 2023, 2024)
9. (Teach Access, 2021, 2023, 2024)
10. (Shunkwiler & Valdez, 2024; Cooney & Shunkwiler, 2023)
11. (Bayer & Serrato Marks, 2023; Pearson & Boskovich, 2019)

Full References:

Atadero, R. A., Paguyo, C. H., Rambo-Hernandez, K. E., & Henderson, H. L. (2018). Building inclusive engineering identities: implications for changing engineering culture. European Journal of Engineering Education, 43(3), 378-398.

Bayer, S., & Serrato Marks, G. (Eds.) (2023). Uncharted: How scientists navigate their own health, research, and experiences of bias. Columbia University Press.

Cooney, K., & Shunkwiler, S. (2023, August 22). The ripple effect – Supporting STEM equity through course design. Magna Educational Development Professionals Conference 2023.

Killpack, T. L., & Melón, L. C. (2016). Toward inclusive STEM classrooms: What personal role do faculty play? CBE Life Sciences Education, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0020

Mamboleo, G., Dong, S., & Fais, C. (2020). Factors associated with disability self-disclosure to their professors among college students with disabilities. Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals 43(2), 78-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/2165143419893360

National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. (2023a, June 5). Disrupting ableism and advancing STEM: A national leadership summit. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/06-05-2023/disrupting-ableism-and-advancing-stem-a-national-leadership-summit

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2023b, June 13). Disrupting ableism and advancing STEM: Fostering effective mentorship in the STEM ecosystem. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/06-13-2023/disrupting-ableism-and-advancing-stem-fostering-effective-mentorship-in-the-stem-ecosystem

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2024, June 10). Disrupting ableism and advancing STEM: A year of reflections and actions. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/42511_06-2024_disrupting-ableism-and-advancing-stem-a-year-of-reflections-and-actions

Newman, L. A., Madaus, J. W., Lalor, A. R., & Javitz, H. S. (2021). Effect of accessing supports on higher education persistence of students with disabilities. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000170

Pearson, H., & Boskovich, L. (2019). Problematizing disability disclosure in higher education: shifting towards a liberating humanizing intersectional framework. Disability Studies Quarterly, 39(1). https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/6001/5187

Royal Academy of Engineering. (2018). Designing inclusion into engineering education: A fresh, practical look at how diversity impacts on engineering and strategies for change. https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/designing-inclusion-into-engineering-education

Shunkwiler, S., & Valdez, A. (2024, August 21). The ripple effect: Creating a culture of inclusion of disabled STEM faculty and students. Magna Faculty Development Professionals Conference.

Source America. (2020). An inclusive future of work: A systems approach. https://www.sourceamerica.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/2020-fow-report_0.pdf

Teach Access (2021). Teach Access strategic plan. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jjSI3xxI3hcc26mtyCTxNr9FJz8upgbv/edit

Teach Access. (2023). Bridging the accessible technology skills gap. https://teachaccess.org/accessibility-skills-gap/

Teach Access. (2024). Why teach accessibility? Fact sheet. https://teachaccess.org/resources/fact-sheet-why-teach-accessibility/

Yerbury, J. J., & Yerbury, R. M. (2021). Disabled in academia: To be or not to be, that is the question. Trends Neuroscience, 44(7), 507-509. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2021.04.004.