Transcript edited by Hannah Dang with support from the DAC team.
Brenda Brueggemann: Great. So I will start us off. I’ll do the first question. And then you guys just pick up with other ones from there.
Brenda Brueggemann: But I’m gonna ask you, Kimberly, if you would introduce yourself and tell us a little kind of, start with the short synopsis of the project that you’re working on with UConn’s Accessibility Fellow
Kimberly Bergendahl: Great. Well thank you, everyone. It’s really nice to meet everybody. Now, I have the names with the faces, so that’s really nice.
Kimberly Bergendahl: And-and I really thank you for inviting me to be a part of this conversation, and it’s this, excuse me, I’m an associate professor in residence in the Department of Political Science, and I saw the announcement for the CLAS accessibility Fellowship at the end of the spring semester, almost a year ago now, and when I saw it for, when I saw the first advertiser, I didn’t really express an interest.
Kimberly Bergendahl: It was kind of on my radar, but not really because, honestly, I don’t see myself as being an authority in Disability Studies, but it is something I cover in my long popular culture class.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So there is one week that we look at how disability rights have been portrayed, and for the most part, it, popular culture could do a better job in terms of presenting people, especially people who may have physical disabilities.
Kimberly Bergendahl: And so, that’s always been an interest of mine, and it’s something I wanted to pursue more and so I thought, well, maybe if I get involved in this fellowship, not only will that give me the incentive to study it more, but also to look at what is going on at the university, and so I-I was really happy to get the fellowship, and I started in the fall.
Kimberly Bergendahl: But actually, during the summer I did a lot of reading to-to catch myself up on the literature out there, and so in doing so for that first meeting, I had come to the fellowship. My application had a bunch of different ideas, none of which had anything to do with the graduate programs in CLAS.
Kimberly Bergendahl: But when we went around the room and we talked about the different things that we were interested in, I finally said, alright, I’ll be the one to look into accessibility for graduate students in CLAS. And so that’s how I came to that particular project. And so, in doing so, the literature that I’ve been looking at, it’s really specific to graduate students who may need accommodations in their respective programs. And so, it’s probably, you know, for all of you who have been doing this kind of research. There’s not much out there in terms of graduate programs in particular, so one of the things I started to do was, I started to conduct interviews with the different graduate directors of the programs in CLAS, and so far, it’s all been positive.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Many departments have already been doing what they need to do in terms of providing accessibility to graduate students. But the question that seems to come up all the time is about general exams, and how to best accommodate students, but also finding out more ahead of time. And that’s I know, that’s a question that’s coming up.
Kimberly Bergendahl: But that seems to be one of the most cited issues, especially for faculty, not knowing how to best accommodate their students. You know we get these letters, but what do we do with them? Especially if, say it’s a general exam that’s seems to be an exam. That’s been used across the board for graduate students. Not every graduate student might benefit from the way that’s being administered. So-so there’s some work to be done, and one of the things that is often promoted is the universal design for learning model, and-and that’s something that I would like to put together.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So part of the deliverables after this fellowship is to come up with that kind of information for different graduate programs to learn more, because I think that’s also some of the questions that come up some factory don’t even know what it is. So that’s part of the plan. But the other part of the plan is also to create some kind of orientation video for graduate students. Graduate students and CLAS come in as both employees as well as students.
Kimberly Bergendahl: I mean, not everybody’s an employee, not everybody gets an assistantship, but for those who do, you know, that can create what you know. I hate to use the phrase, a dual dilemma, but it could be a dual dilemma in that if the graduate student has a documented disability, is in need of an accommodation, that graduate student might have to go through both the Center for Students with Disabilities but also Human Resources. So it’s just getting the information out.
Kimberly Bergendahl: But also as the literature has shown, graduate students, unlike undergraduates, are less likely to disclose a documented disability. It’s the fear of the stigma, the fear that it’s going to impact their performance in graduate programs, but also how that might impact their ability to make that transition into the workforce. So with that said, I’ve also been working with the Center for Career Development in coming up with programming for students to provide them with information on how and when to disclose a disability and also how to make that transition. So that event is going to be coming up actually at the end of March following spring break. We don’t have anything definitive yet, but right now the tentative date for that is March the 20th.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So that’s going to be an event for graduate students.
But before that coming up in a couple of weeks, on February the 24th, we’re running a program on accessibility and IT for graduate students.And that came up in a conversation I had with the group of graduate students who had been a part of a focus group last year for CLAS and and one of the recommendations was what kind of technologies are available.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So, not just for students who might need accommodations, but also just in general, you know, sometimes we work better through different technologies. And-and these technologies can be, you know, universal for all. So-so that’s something that Karen Skudlarek, who is the IT Accessibility Coordinator, she’s putting together a fantastic program for graduate students. And like I said, that’s going to be on February 24th.
Kimberly Bergendahl: But recently, Professor Brueggemann and I met, you know, and as we know, Professor Brueggemann is the foremost authority, as I see it on disability rights on campus, and in-in asking her different questions and in terms of programming she came up with the great idea for this event to have a group of individuals, a panel presentation of different individuals within their fields, and who have disclosed disabilities, and to to be able to talk about their experiences.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So it’s a way of addressing both that stigma, but also disclosure for graduate students, so we’re hoping that that might be as we end the spring semester or maybe as we come back and get closer to the fall. So that’s a work in progress. But that’s kind of that signature event to provide information for graduate students. So I know it’s supposed to be a short description. But my apologies, I think I went on.
Brenda Brueggemann: That was really wonderful. And in fact, I looked and you kind of answered a number of other questions or came at them. But I think we still want to maybe ask them to kind of parse out some particulars.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Sure.
Brenda Brueggemann: Alright, does someone want to ask that second question? She kind of addressed it.
Ally Carbutti: Yeah, sure, that was really great. Another question we had, that’s a little more specific, is to what extent are the accommodations that you kind of offer not addressing the full needs as students?
Kimberly Bergendahl: Yeah, I think that’s honestly, I think that is a difficult question to answer, because each individual is unique. And-and honestly part of the questions that I’ve asked the graduate directors in CLAS is, you know, if there are any issues, any challenges and I think it’s just that broad question of wanting to know more about how to accommodate or knowing it in advance which I think the that’s the challenge for a lot of folks as that we often get letters throughout the semester, or you know, sometimes we don’t even know, and-and and that’s the other thing, too.
Kimberly Bergendahl: You might think somebody might need accommodation, but you can’t tell them so. So there are some challenges in that way, but I think because every case is different. It really is a hard question to answer, but I would say that-that’s the-the other point is just wanting to know more. You know, that would be helpful in providing accommodations, or at least knowing it in advance, because that would help in designing courses to-to provide a better experience for all students.
Brenda Brueggemann: Brenda, here, I’m actually gonna follow up on that even a little bit more, because I’ve seen. I’m thinking about it several times now you’ve mentioned the letter and the significance of that letter, and so what is-what are your thoughts? What are you finding about like the letter I think you mentioned that a lot of faculty don’t know what to do with the letter–
Kimberly Bergendahl: Exactly. Yeah.
Brenda Brueggemann: –I want to, do the graduate students themselves know what to do with the letter?
Kimberly Bergendahl: See, that’s, I have not questioned a lot of graduate students yet, but I get the sense that if faculty are saying these things, that especially faculty, have been teaching for so many years, I mean some of us, I’ve been teaching for twenty-eight years, now and-and that was shortly after we start to see the impact of the Americans Disabilities Act and the expansion really of, you know, getting letters to accommodate students.And so I think graduate students, again I don’t have a lot of information on that, but I would assume that because faculty asked this, I know I hear it even at department meetings in my own department, you know I, part of it is even just simple questions too.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So here’s a question that’s been coming up, and I don’t have an answer to it. And this is actually something we’re going to be discussing more this week because the faculty fellows meet on a weekly basis. And so this week we are meeting with the Center for Students with Disabilities. So Christine Wenzel and I believe some other folks from there will be joining us in our conversation about even testing centers. Right?
Kimberly Bergendahl: So when students have that accommodation for extra time, or need a quiet space, not every faculty member can accommodate them. So we’re, this has been the question now, a lot of people want to know. Well, if the student doesn’t ask in that seven day window, now that they’re asked to make that request for an accommodation, what can be done? Especially if a faculty member cannot accommodate the students. So, you know, I again like, I said, that’s one of those things that even right now I don’t have a definitive answer, because it would be on a case by case basis.
Ally Carbutti: I have another question. I know you keep talking about working in collaboration with the Center for Disability Studies, but are you looking to kind of change the way that they approach situations or just stick to the sort of letter and then educate professors on that letter? Because I know that like personally, I’ve talked to a lot of undergrads that have lots of problems with the center. And like, it’s not necessarily getting accommodations, but it’s when there’s a medical emergency, and the professors don’t really know how to handle that or how to approach it, even if it is a registered condition with the center.
Kimberly Bergendahl: No, that’s a good question. And honestly part of my application. When I applied for this fellowship it was to make recommendations, and how to make the process better, but our job in CLAS is not to tell CSD what to do, but instead, what we’re doing is, it is as you said, more of that collaboration right now. And so the faculty fellows have been working, and along with the Associate Deans of CLAS being Kate Capshaw and Evelyn Tribble. So there’s this what we call now our FAQ List.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So right now, all of these questions have some answers and those answers have gone through the Center for Students with Disabilities. So I think it’s more of providing the information, those answers to the most popular questions that have come up.But yeah, you know, I’m more of the type of person I like to see a way in which maybe change can take place, but unfortunately you know, with with the Center for Students with Disabilities, they are under federal law, and they-they have to follow the law, and-and of course, a lot of you know. My understanding, too, is, some of it can be driven by case law, you know, if there’s a case that has come up, that-that’s really the way in which change does take place it’s often by way of that. And so as a public law person, you know, for site, that’s part of like what’s been on my radar.
Ally Carbutti: That’s a good answer. Another question I have is, I know you are very focused on grad students, but like, are you going to eventually branch out to undergrads? Because I think that a lot of what you’re doing can be very accessible to everyone, and I don’t-I don’t know if necessarily it should be just focused on grad students, because I think that’s kind of depriving other people with disability studies on campus.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Oh no, of course there is a faculty fellow. Her name is Erin Scanlan, who has been looking at the she’s right now looking at it in terms of undergraduate education and providing more accessibility in that way, and so she has a group that’s formed with faculty now to instruct faculty on how to best accommodate the undergraduate population. So that’s been her area of expertise or area of interest. That’s why when I met the faculty fellows for the first time, I had already seen her because she had run up a workshop, actually with Professor Brueggemann, and so I knew this is not for me to do. This is definitely for, for Erin, as part of this group. And so her focus that that’s her focus
Brenda Brueggemann: Okay. So I think you mentioned, I’m gonna ask you to pick up on. You mentioned more towards the beginning that you hadn’t really been involved with disability studies, but that you did kind of teach. You know that, and so did you enter more of that this summer without the reading that you did, or how? What-where do you sit when you think about yourself as someone who does disability studies [inaudible]?
Kimberly Bergendahl: Yeah. No, that’s a good question. So during the summer my focus was just mostly on pedagogy, and you know, accessibility and education and because it’s something I had not done at all. With the disability rights, I’ve studied more about you know it for my course, itself about the Americans with Disabilities Act and and the previous acts. So that was something that again, it’s not my specific area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but I was more familiar with that going into the summer, so I figured I would just catch up on the literature that I had not studied at all, so it was mostly on pedagogy.
Brenda Brueggemann: Alright. I, Madison, can you pick up on question number four?
Madison Bigelow: Yeah, I think that Allie sort of touched on this earlier. But sort of what led to you specifically to own in on graduate students as a fellow. Maybe, like, yeah, how? Why, graduate students, specifically.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Okay, so this is something I had not addressed previously. You know like I said, nobody had selected graduate students in the Faculty Fellows Group, but from my own personal experience, I was a graduate student at UConn. I entered UConn as a graduate student in 1991, and when I did I went to the Wilbur Cross Building, and there was just one room for students with disabilities. I wear a prosthesis on my right leg, so I already had that understanding, you know what it’s like to try to navigate through institutions with a disability. And so I went to that office, and it was just two people sitting in that office. Of course, this is 1991. Right?
Kimberly Bergendahl: That’s the context. And so my request was just to get accommodations for parking and for within the housing, within the graduate residences, because I needed a special setup for shower. But aside from that, I didn’t need it. You know, it wasn’t an educational accommodation, so that was really my experience. They were very accommodating, and then we started to see the growth of CSD and you know I’ve witnessed it for all of these years, and so I’ve seen that growth. And but I, again I think that I’ve seen it mostly as an instructor who teaches primarily undergraduates. I’ve seen all of that for undergraduates, but I haven’t really seen it for graduate students.
Kimberly Bergendahl: And so that’s why, you know, I just know what it was like with a physical disability that needed an accommodation.And then also looking at it from the eyes of an instructor, now, after all these years, somehow some way on this campus for thirty, gonna be what thirty-two years in September. But yeah, it’s, I’ve seen it in that way. And I just thought, well, you know, I want to learn more about graduate students, because it just seems like, not much does come up even for us. As faculty, in my department. I didn’t really know and you don’t know, of course, if anybody is, you know, requesting an accommodation unless you are the instructor, or on their committee, but that is something that I was interested in, and also just even then looking at the literature, you know the other things that I find intriguing about graduate students admissions is different right?
Kimberly Bergendahl: So undergrads. You apply, as you know, and it goes through admissions and on campus, but for graduate students, the application goes to the graduate school, and then it’s decentralized to the department, and so I volunteered to be on the graduate admissions committee this year in political science, so I could get a better understanding of what we’re looking for, and if this ever comes up, and at no point does it. And, so that’s another thing that you know, of course, that parallels nicely with the literature in that.Students aren’t going to disclose [their disabilities] upon applying, so, but I think that as we move forward we should make it very clear to applicants that we are an accessible campus. And here are the ways in which we can make the graduate programs, especially in CLAS accessible to them if they are accepted
Brenda Brueggemann: Great! Like we’re figuring out like that the next question, so that I think we’re almost at the end.I think our last major question is is about the apparent decentralization of things involving disability on UConn.But I would say it’s not that indicative of UConn you, and I kind of talked about this a little bit while we talked. So what have you observed in terms of like, who-who’s in charge of this? What you know. What-what if you observed the landscape overall? Stigma and accommodations. But yeah.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Yeah, I think that you know this question is, it’s challenging for me.I’ll be honest, because I see it as every area, somehow, some way tries to address it right. And you know, and we know that there are different resources on campus that are geared towards working at this right to try to make programs accessible [and] IT accessible, but the whole scheme of things.It’s, you know, if you go on. And-and I I did this during one of our faculty meetings. Our faculty fellows meetings, and I just because I was curious, I’m thinking, is there any place I could go to just to learn like where I get all these resources?
Kimberly Bergendahl: And there is a site accessibility that uconn.edu, and they have all these different buttons, but still, you know, as a faculty member, you know, who now, you know, I I continue to require some kind of a accommodation, and I had surgery last year and that made it even more difficult and I didn’t even, you know honestly again, after all these years I didn’t know what to do, and even within departments depending on who you’re talking to within a department they might not even know. So it has you know, if it does become decentralized sometimes the more decentralization that takes place, the less the person happens to know about it.
Kimberly Bergendahl: You know it’s almost it-it’s kind of an I don’t know. I draw a comparison when you think of bureaucracy. There are people at the head, but like even as you move down, and what we call right and this is even in sociology, street level bureaucrats.
Those are the ones you come in contact with. The day-to-day basis.They provide you with a lot of information. But you know, depending on who I had to meet with.Sometimes I got information. Sometimes I didn’t, so it just seems like, yeah.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So that’s why my own personal experience. But I think that, you know, maybe there has to be some other way of just putting this in-in, I don’t know, something more centralized, but at least for CLAS. That is the effort right now to, you know. Put this together, and that’s the other thing we’re working on.So what I was talking about before about putting an orientation package together for graduate students. That might be just a part of something, you know. That’ll be a greater site on the CLAS website. So, but yeah, parking, that’s an issue, too. You know, we-we talked about parking. [inaudible]
Ally Carbutti: I have a follow-up question. I know that you’re talking about a lot of great things. I have lots of questions, but I’d like to focus on the faculty. I know you keep saying you’re gonna provide a lot of information, but does that include like faculty training like, do you think you’re gonna propose like along with the orientation like specific mandatory training, that faculty has to take on accessibility that isn’t just UConn provided?
Kimberly Bergendahl: Absolutely that’s a good question, especially since at the university there are certain things that are mandatory that we have to do like compliance, training, and you know every so often we we go through sexual harassment training on that.
And so when it comes to accessibility, I you know, I-I would love to see something like it mandatory, because so many people have questions, and it’s better that instead of we just read these pieces of information that come out, it’s also good to have some kind of venue where everybody is together going through the training.
Kimberly Bergendahl: And they can ask questions in real time, so other people can hear that, because I think everybody is asking the same questions, and it would be good to hear the answer all at once, or at least as much as you can do, so I would love to see it. But of course that’s not something that I have the power to do. You know, that could be a recommendation, and-and one of the things I am going to do is put together a list of recommendations based on what I’ve learned over this year, and-and that may be just that. But you know, of course, that’s a decision that has to be made by somebody who is higher up in authority.
Ashten Carter: I had a question. It kind of ties in together [with] what you were talking about earlier with like the existing like structures, but also like incorporating universal design, and like the fact that faculty and graduate students may not even know what to do. So, do you think that moving toward a model of universal design for learning would be more effective than like going through those individual like letter requests and like having everybody make sense of it all together? I mean, like, I guess, what I’m asking like would adopting an universal design help make this movement more centralized and give professors and students more agency and ability to collaborate?
Kimberly Bergendahl: I-I have to say just my own personal experience experimenting with universal design for learning, I think it’s a great idea. Maybe I just wasn’t.
You know. I-I just only have an end of one, so to speak, in one class, so far, and-and the reason why I’m saying this is because I have a lot of questions regarding it, you know, on paper. It seems like it would be great you know it also tied-tied in with some of the work that I had done in graduate school, you know, in relation to equal rights. But when I employed it in the fall, I think the thing that has to be clear to the students is that this is a model that’s being employed. It’s deployed, in a way that also embeds accommodations already, because I think students who might have that request for an accommodation, and you try to explain it to them.
That? Well, these are the accommodations that are already in place.
Kimberly Bergendahl: They don’t see that, and they make requests. And so you kind of, you’re still working with it. So to me, it seems like faculty if they see that, and they experience that they might say, well, that defeats the purpose, than employing universal design for learning. If students are still going to say, well, that’s not enough, I still you know this is my accommodation letter. And again, not knowing, you know what really that accommodation is that-that needs to be in place, because sometimes it can be up to negotiations right like when you, when you see an accommodation letter as a faculty member, and you have to work with CSD in figuring it out and then the student engages in that conversation. You know. I-I think even-even at that point I I had said that for one of my classes, and-and I still ended up, you know, providing an accommodation that went well beyond you know what the expectation was not only for the class but even for the letter Itself. So I think that’s, you know, in terms of my own experience.
Kimberly Bergendahl: I really think that maybe I need to learn more about it. But I also think that that whole collaboration needs to be very clear. And so maybe you know, for CSD in these letters acknowledging certain classes. So this is one of the things that I had said, and I might, you know, make this recommendation again, but you know classes that are identified as following universal design for learning. So students already know that right, like you can see it when you sign up for a class. And you say, Okay, you know, this is good. So you know, I-I know this is an accessible class. And so maybe that would be a way of keeping everybody already on the same page before the class even begins.
Ashten Carter: Thank you so much. That’s like, really important. And I like how you brought to attention that a lot of students don’t even know what universal design is.
14:06:41 So like when we’re adopting this like-ike introducing it to everyone. I think that’s like a really really cool thing to consider. Thank you.
Kimberly Bergendahl: No, thank you for the question.
Ally Carbutti: Yeah, I think that’s a really great idea to have CSD recognize the different classes.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Exactly.
Ally Carbutti: I think also kind of what I was gathering from your personal experience is that the students who have disabilities still requesting, I’m not sure like any design models gonna fully capture all the needs of the student because it is so individualized, but in your experience do you think that the universal design model worked better for everyone like including people who weren’t registered for CSD? Because I know that a lot of students themselves don’t even know that they have a disability or like, if someone has anxiety or depression or like specifically mental health or like cognitive problems, a lot of people don’t register that, that can qualify as a disability.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Oh, yeah, no, I think so. And I think you know, just based on the evaluations, the course evaluations because this is a class where the majority of the class, you know. Honestly, I think it was just one person for this particular class who needed an accommodation, or everybody else did not self-disclose If they did have an accommodation request, but the-the evaluations were great. You know, the feedback was actually very favorable that we really appreciated the choices and the flexibility.
Kimberly Bergendahl: So, yeah, and-and I had, I, I actually had some element of it in my class a year ago, which is actually again the long popular culture class, which is kind of interesting, and I had a conversation with the student who at that point had an accommodation in place, and that person said, well, I’m really glad you did this because I didn’t even have to ask you for the specific accommodation, because you’ve already given me these choices so so I’d done it without even knowing it. It was just one of those things that thought it was going to work. Well, you know I didn’t even call it universal design for learning.
I just said, okay, you can have all of these different options for this particular assignment, and-and it just, you know, everyone seemed to appreciate that because it matched up with their particular learning style.
Ally Carbutti: Yeah, that’s really great. Thank you.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Thank you.
Brenda Brueggemann: Yeah, so I think we can forward to the end. I’m-I’m back again. I gotta say I’m having this very weird thing that’s going on, and it’s never happened before, and that my laptop tracking pad decided to connect up with my iPad over here on the right where the captions are. So when I try to track something it tracks on my ipad. That never happened before. Well. So, I disconnected it, but now [it’s] connected again, so I was stuck in mute for a long time, which was maybe a good thing, but I figured it out, but it’s still doing it. It’s so weird to say, technology. Has that happened to anyone ever before? Yeah, never before me, but it’s still doing it. If I move my map over, it-it comes up on my ipad over here. Okay. So I was struggling there. I was typing it to you all using text messages because I couldn’t even type anything into the zoom space.Okay, so last, question.
Elisa Shaholli: Yeah, our final question. Thank you so much for this interview. I’ve definitely learned a lot more coming. I’ve learned a lot more after this than I did coming in about you know what exactly this project is, and what you’re doing and it’s really phenomenal work. The last question, the last question that we had was really, are there any questions that you want us to ask you that we haven’t already asked you, or even are there any questions that you want to ask us? Are there any things during this interview that maybe you wish that we touched upon that we didn’t? Or just anything that you’re curious about, that we can maybe answer for you?
Kimberly Bergendahl: No, thank you. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell you about what we’ve been doing, and also asking any of you. You know, if-if I have any questions of you, because I-I guess I do have a general question, but I think a lot of you have already asked questions which you know has given me some insight into you, know what we could be doing. But is there anything else as somebody who is on this group, a part of this group, this faculty, fellows group, does anybody have any advice, any recommendations or anything you think should be addressed that I can bring to this group? Because I think that’s the thing. We just wanna hear more from people, you know, and what-what we could be doing beyond what we’re already doing.
Ashten Carter: I would say I like, I really love that this is even a conversation that we’re able to have with faculty members, because I know that, like in the-in the past, like I haven’t seen as many people be so receptive to it.I would say, I know that, like universal design is like a difficult concept to implement, especially like when you’re teaching multiple different classes with different groups of students. If you’re even like-it’s like behind the scenes on like the administrative and bureaucratic side of things, if you continue to model expectations that incorporate accessibility and universal design in your classes, undergrads and grad students will take notice, and they’ll bring that with them. So, even if it seems like a small thing to do it in your classes that maybe isn’t making sense on the administrative side, your students will notice, and then the administration will also notice.
Kimberly Bergendahl: Thank you. No, that’s a really good point, I think modeling is one of those most important things right? Because if you do something and it just, it shows that you recognize it, and-and hopefully others will pick up on it as well.
Brenda Brueggemann: Very well said, Ashten. Ashten for President.
Kimberly Bergendahl: That’s right.
Brenda Brueggemann: With that, you know. Sometimes it has to come from little pieces from the ground up other than the top, down. Great. So thank you so much for talking with us, Kim. I’m gonna go ahead and stop the recording while I have this magic moment that my mouse is actually working.
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