University of California neurodiversity recommendations

[psd...@ucdavis.edu]

Hello everyone!

 

I’m just quickly emailing to follow up on something I briefly mentioned at the beginning of the last CANVAS meeting – the one with the very interesting talk on libraries.

 

I had mentioned in the meeting that we submitted some recommendations on neurodiversity to the UC-wide Senate and that those were endorsed by them.  They are not binding, but I am optimistic they will lead to some progressive change.  I just heard the full text of those recommendations has been posted online at https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/mg-mb-recs-neurodivergent-students.pdf, with the other UC Senate recommendations, so I thought I should share that full text with everyone.

 

Points in the recommendations include:

• Establishing disability cultural centres
• Recognizing neurodiversity as a DEI issue (considering intersectionality, collecting data on and working to improve representation, etc.)
• Neurodiversity training for everyone
• Neurodivergent people to be leaders in neurodiversity initiatives
• Trying to get a sort of one-stop-shop model for accommodations rather than scattering so many of them over at housing or human resources etc.
• Making disability status easier to demonstrate, especially by accepting IEPs as proof
• Treating sensory issues seriously in terms of housing & dining accommodations, construction & renovations
• Transition supports into college
• Transition supports out of college
• Improving mental health support (hiring people with neurodiversity expertise, offering ongoing support not crisis model, neurodiversity mental health groups)
• A speedy remediation process if accommodations not provided
• Offering flexibility of communication modalities (e.g., not forcing people to use phone to book an appointment)
• Letting people bring along an advocate/family member/support person without fuss if desired – having a straightforward process to verify the support person’s presence is desired and not an imposition

 

A shout-out to TC Waisman: the executive summary of TC’s thesis (providing a list of steps for making an autism-inclusive campus) was very helpful as we prepared these recommendations.  I put the first draft together at fairly short notice and TC’s thesis provided a lot of great ideas.

 

Best,

 

Patrick

 

Patrick Dwyer

Ph.D. Candidate, Developmental Psychology

Neurocognitive Development Lab

Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis

 

Personal Blog: http://www.autisticscholar.com/

Pronouns: he/him/his

 

[Kristen Gillespie]

These recommendations are fantastic! I'm so glad they were endorsed by the UC Senate. 

I will share them with people at CUNY. Thanks so much for this important work Patrick and TC!

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[florenc...@gmail.com]

This is really good and useful, Patrick, thank you!!

https://groups.google.com/a/collegeautismnetwork.org/d/msgid/CAN-CANVAS/CA%2BhNwSa4B12udV8BOYziUWbvkeHPM7-btwbKF%3D3%3Dk2xERYH4Lw%40mail.gmail.com

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[Mary Baker-Ericzen]

Ditto to the wonderful work on these recommendations!  I plan to share with SDSU as well.

-Mary

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Mary Baker-Ericzén, PhD

Research Professor/Research Scientist/ Clinical Psychologist

Interwork Institute

WINTAC; ACHIEVE; SUCCESS

Department of Administration, Rehabilitation and Post-Secondary Education

San Diego State University

Operations Director

Child & Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC)

mbaker...@sdsu.edu

[Cindy Wu]

I agree! Such helpful information. Thank you for sharing it, Patrick!

Cindy

Cindy Wu, Ph.D.

Professor of Human Resource Management

Hankamer School of Business

Baylor University

One Bear Place #98006

Waco, TX  76798

Phone: 254-710-7672

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[Ava Gurba]

I also just wanted to echo everyone's wonderful feedback Patrick. These suggestions are awesome. I'm really glad the UC-Senate was responsive, and I'm thinking of where I can pass this along at my university. 

All the best,

Ava Gurba

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Ava Gurba

[psd...@ucdavis.edu]

Thank you everyone for these kind words!  And I am glad to hear some of you think it could help build momentum at your institutions too – that would be awesome!

 

Best,

 

Patrick

 

Patrick Dwyer

Ph.D. Candidate, Developmental Psychology

Neurocognitive Development Lab

Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis

 

Personal Blog: http://www.autisticscholar.com/

Pronouns: he/him/his

 

From: Ava Gurba <ava....@stonybrook.edu>
Sent: July 16, 2021 9:55 AM
To: Cindy Wu <wu7...@gmail.com>
Cc: florenc...@gmail.com; Patrick Dwyer <psd...@ucdavis.edu>; Kristen Gillespie <kgi...@gmail.com>; CANVAS - CAN Virtual Association of Scholars <can-c...@collegeautismnetwork.org>
Subject: Re: [CANVAS] University of California neurodiversity recommendations

 

I also just wanted to echo everyone's wonderful feedback Patrick. These suggestions are awesome. I'm really glad the UC-Senate was responsive, and I'm thinking of where I can pass this along at my university. 

 

All the best,

 

Ava Gurba

 

On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 12:45 PM Cindy Wu <wu7...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree! Such helpful information. Thank you for sharing it, Patrick!

 

Cindy

 

Cindy Wu, Ph.D.

Professor of Human Resource Management

Hankamer School of Business

Baylor University

One Bear Place #98006

Waco, TX  76798

Phone: 254-710-7672

 

On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:27 AM florenc...@gmail.com <florenc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

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Ava Gurba

[Christina Nicolaidis]

Nice work!

Might I suggest you (Patrick, TC, and/or others) submit a Perspective article with these recommendations for Autism in Adulthood? :). 

Contact me if you want to talk about what that might look like. Perspectives articles are peer-reviewed. They should lay out a well-referenced argument for the recommendations. These recs would be a very nice addition to the literature. Plus, referring to a peer-reviewed publication can sometimes help people make a stronger case when trying to implement such recommendations at their own institutions. 

And hey, while I am at it - we would love to see more submissions about secondary education in Autism in Adulthood (www.lieberpub.com/aut). I am always excited to see what people post on this list, and it seems like many of you are doing really great work, but I have seen surprisingly few submissions related to secondary education so far. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. 

 

-Christina

Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH

Professor and Senior Scholar in Social Determinants of Health, School of Social Work, Portland State University (PSU)

Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU)

Co-Director, Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (http://aaspire.org)

Director, Social Determinants of Health Initiative (http://pdx.edu/social-determinants-health)

Editor-in-Chief, Autism in Adulthood, www.liebertpub.com/aut 

1600 SW 4th Ave, Suite 900, Portland, OR 97201, USA

nic...@pdx.edu; 1-503-725-9603

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[psd...@ucdavis.edu]

Thanks for the kind words Brooke, and great questions!

 

I can what happened with our original recommendations is this: we were delivering a bunch of neurodiversity presentations and various people in the audiences ended up getting inspired to either do things themselves based on our ideas, or introduce us to contacts they had in administration.  So for example we were given the opportunity to speak to the Academic Senate committee because the committee chair was in a department we provided neurodiversity training to, and he evidently thought we were saying something important that the committee needed to hear.

 

When we started our neurodiversity trainings we weren’t intentionally trying to do this, but what has in practice happened is that the trainings give us an opportunity to connect with people who are genuinely supportive and eager to be allies!  That personal interest and dedication has been very important.

 

This allowed us to do more than we would have thought possible: we initially ruled out a top-down approach because the UC system is so decentralized.  Ironically our bottom-up approach to neurodiversity education ballooned up the ladder and promptly turned into a top-down one more or less by accident!

 

Patrick

 

Patrick Dwyer

Ph.D. Candidate, Developmental Psychology

Neurocognitive Development Lab

Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis

 

Personal Blog: http://www.autisticscholar.com/

Pronouns: he/him/his

 

From: Ingersoll, Brooke <inge...@msu.edu>
Sent: July 19, 2021 9:07 AM
To: Mary Baker-Ericzen <mbaker...@sdsu.edu>; Kristen Gillespie <kgi...@gmail.com>
Cc: Patrick Dwyer <psd...@ucdavis.edu>; CANVAS - CAN Virtual Association of Scholars <CAN-C...@collegeautismnetwork.org>
Subject: RE: [CANVAS] University of California neurodiversity recommendations

 

Thank you for sharing these well-developed recommendations.  I am excited about sharing this information with MSU as well.  For those of who reached out to University Administrators with this information, would you mind sharing who you spoke with (e.g., Admin Role(s)) and any recs you have about successful approaches.  I am hoping to be as effective as possible which means getting to the “right” people.  Thank you in advance for any guidance.

Best,

Brooke

 

From: Mary Baker-Ericzen <mbaker...@sdsu.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2021 10:54 AM
To: Kristen Gillespie <kgi...@gmail.com>
Cc: Patrick Dwyer <psd...@ucdavis.edu>; CANVAS - CAN Virtual Association of Scholars <CAN-C...@collegeautismnetwork.org>
Subject: Re: [CANVAS] University of California neurodiversity recommendations

 

Ditto to the wonderful work on these recommendations!  I plan to share with SDSU as well.

-Mary

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/collegeautismnetwork.org/d/msgid/CAN-CANVAS/CAHgfWmXsXWn%3D3nz3sv_FkdQ9KCV6fHehX9sZsm%2BuMYt5CWGa-g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Mary Baker-Ericzen]

HI all,

We're sharing and working with our Division of Student Affairs and Campus Diversity  which also has our Center for Inclusive Excellence.  They also recently awarded us a small grant to prepare the College SUCCESS program for a credit course to be offered this spring that will help support neurodiverse students and other students as well (both undergrad and grad). 

best,

Mary

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 9:58 AM Ingersoll, Brooke <inge...@msu.edu> wrote:

Thank you, Patrick, for your insights. 

Best wishes,

Brooke

[Vanessa Bal]

Brooke 

I shared with the associate Dean of our graduate school. I’d probably have typically started with our Dean but our Assoc Dean happens to be our champion for all things autism related in our school. 

I can keep you posted where it goes from here. Our provost is pretty interested in these topics so I would imagine she might be our next step.

Best

Vanessa

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Vanessa H. Bal, PhD

Karmazin and Lillard Chair in Adult Autism

Associate Professor

Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology

Rutgers University-New Brunswick 

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Ph: (848) 445-2300

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On Jul 19, 2021, at 12:28 PM, psdwyer via CANVAS - CAN Virtual Association of Scholars <CAN-C...@collegeautismnetwork.org> wrote:



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[Amy Accardo]

Thank you for sharing this Patrick! I also plan to share at my university and know this will make an important impact in our work centering neurodiversity in diversity initiatives. So excited to share your awesome resource.

Amy

[Lawrence Fung]

Congratulations, Patrick! This is a huge milestone. Hope your exemplary efforts can help make other institutions more neurodiversity-friendly. Well done!

 

Very Best,

Lawrence

 

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Lawrence Fung, M.D., Ph.D.

Director, Stanford Neurodiversity Project

Director, Adult Neurodevelopment Clinic

Co-Director, Psychiatry Grand Rounds

Principal Investigator, Fung Lab  

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Stanford University School of Medicine

 

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[Santoshi Halder]

Great to hear this Patrick. Really remarkable achievement and great initiative. All the best!

I am sure your initiative will facilitate a neurodiverse community for the common good and well being of all for sustainability in the years to come and also show leads to other Universities not only in USA but also other countries.

Regards

Santoshi

__________________

Santoshi Halder, M.A., Special B.Ed. (RCI), General B.Ed. (WBUTTEPA), PhD, BCBA

Associate Professor, Department of Education, 

University of Calcutta, Alipore Campus, 

1 Reformatory Street, Kolkata-700027, INDIA

University profile link: 

https://www.caluniv.ac.in/academic/department/Education/Santoshi-Halder.pdf

Contact info: 

Ph: (+91) 8961044413

Email: santosh...@yahoo.com/ sh...@caluniv.ac.in

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[Margarones, Margot]

Patrick,

This is a remarkable resource! Thank you for setting up the framework for this important work. I have shared your recommendations with universities in Connecticut. 

Congratulations!

Best,

Margot Margarones

PS I really like the idea of building awareness around the inclusion of sensory protocols and accommodations and would love to see this as an everyday practice in K-12 settings and institutes of higher learning. 

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[Eric Endlich]

Fabulous work, Patrick! I loved it so much I referenced it in my forthcoming article, "Truly Inclusive Admissions: Recruiting Students with Disabilities" (attached).

Eric

Eric Endlich, Ph.D.

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Psychologist & Founder, Top College Consultants®

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Schedule a meeting with me

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