Phase 1: Model Institutions
As part of our analysis of disability studies, it is important to view various examples of what disability studies could look like on college campuses. This helps the reader as well as our team to better understand what disability studies entails and ponder on what can be done at Lafayette College. The following examples are two educational institutions that are very different by nature and do extraordinary work on leading the disability studies academia. They were selected as an overlap between engineering education and disability studies and they set a high bar for the future of disability studies at Lafayette.
Case Study #1 : University of Washington
University of Washington (UW) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. As a public research university, UW is in a position where research is common courtesy and with more than 2,500 faculty members and over 46,000 students, there is a tremendous amount of human power to dive into diverse academic inquiries. A long-lasting collaboration between engineering and disability studies is one.
UW’s engineering college is a well-known institution with the mission of “develop[ing] outstanding engineers and ideas that change the world” (University of Washington, 2020). Under this ambitious mission, the college houses nine different departments varying from aeronautics to human centered design & engineering, which will be the main focus of this section. The exemplary part of UW in terms of disability studies is how they have embraced a human centered design approach for their engineers. The establishment of a human centered design department showcases academic possibilities of a socio-technical understanding of engineering.
Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) Department
Human centered design (HCD) is a problem-solving approach that utilizes a series of iterative, often nonlinear steps to tailor-make solutions for complex problems (Leung et al., 2020). It focuses on the user need and iterative design process to find solutions for problems. It focuses on the ‘human’ of the problem and tries to understand the human’s experience as well as needs to the engineering design process.
The relationship between design and engineer is more of a linear one where engineers use design techniques to solve problems that they believe need to be solved. The education that engineers are exposed to is traditionally focused on improving the engineer’s technical design skillset to find solutions for real problems. Engineering education, by majority, focuses on ensuring the technical proficiency of the engineer. Given the demanding nature of building a technical skill set, most of an engineering education curriculum is built upon teaching students about how to design, not so much about who to design for. Engineers learn to interact with the machinery to get them to do certain tasks, not so much to interact with people who will later become the users of their design.
HCD methodology and practices brings up a new perspective to engineering education by training the engineers to put the user’s experience and needs into the center of the design process. To do so, HCD draws various concepts and practices from Design Thinking, which is a process of creative problem solving. These combined tools complement “the more technical engineering requirement artifacts with a human-centered perspective” (Hehn et al., 2019).
UW’s department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) combines HCD and engineering under one roof. By fostering a greater understanding for the needs of users, the department focuses on creating learning environments and opportunities for their engineers to design for all parts of the society. Under a perspective of better understanding what disability studies could look like in different institutions, HCDE showcases how engineering education can build more inclusive practices from within.
UW aims to foster engineers that can build projects to serve all parts of the society, a striving goal that requires great collaboration between the department and the community partners. The HCDE department showcases an interdisciplinary engineering education where constant readjustment to the ever changing needs of the society is possible. They describe their vision of their program as “a just future is possible. We will be the leading academic program integrating empathy and collaboration to design and engineer equitable practices, tools, and technologies across the globe” (University of Washington, 2009).
In terms of better understanding different communities that coexist within our society, HCD is a key practice to understand the needs of the disabled community. For engineers to step out of their own understanding of ‘ability’ and try to understand the needs of someone who has had a completely different life experience, more training is required rather than only building technical skills. The interdepartmental connections, design thinking practices, and communicating with the community partners that are offered through HCDE are examples of different types of interventions to engineering education to foster engineers who are better suited to work with the disabled community.
HCD by default requires great collaboration of different departments to build a bridge between technical and non-technical skills. For example, design thinking exercises utilize an iterative process where the engineers communicate with their users continuously. They build their prototype around continuous feedback that they receive from communicating with the user. Being able to receive feedback and turn it into actionable design items are more about engineers’ listening skills more than their technical skills. To learn about the social contracts that are built into different communities, engineers need to be aware of social, cultural and gender dynamics which are built into sociology and anthropology curriculums. UW does a great job of forming these interdisciplinary bridges around the campus in a long lasting manner.
The curriculum offering varies from a bachelor and master of science degrees to “The Doctor of Philosophy” program. Very appropriate to its name, the center also offers an “User-Centered Design” certificate for their graduates. With their faculty of 17 tenure and tenure-track faculty and 17 joint or adjunct faculty, HCDE’s interdisciplinary approach does not only seem to be very diverse in terms of interdepartmental connections but also a well established commitment to maintain this diversity of departments in collaboration.
On top of creating open and sustainable communication channels between departments, HCDE also prioritizes communicating with the greater community outside of academia. Human centered design process involves engineers working with ‘humans’ who are not engineers. HCDE utilizes an annual printing, Designing Up, to share their yearly accomplishments of faculty, staff and students in the form of a magazine. This is a great practice, not to only expand their communication with the outside world but also to keep a record of the work that different agents accomplish on the campus.
For the greater engineering education framework, human centered design plays a key role in fostering engineers that are capable of working with different communities, one of which is the disabled community. The HCDE program is aiming to pave the path for inclusive design across the nation, and to be internationally recognized. Their strategic vigor in becoming globally recognized showcases an institutional priority on offering ‘human centered design’ not only as a possibility for some engineers, but as an integral part of greater engineering education. That’s why the department is an important case study for any college that is aiming to expand their engineering education offering to be more inclusive and collaborative.
History of HCDE
Bringing human centered design and engineering together is an initiative that requires various efforts in a college. It is about working with the other engineering departments to establish credibility, it is about working with other departments on the campus to build the bridges between perspectives. All that work that needs to be done shows itself in the history of how HCDE became a stand alone department in a big public institution. HCDE’s history is important to understand how initiatives that aim to improve engineering education are not accomplished within a short period of time. HCDE’s case showcases that in higher education, initial igniter(s) of an idea is needed at first. Then, supportive forces carry this undertaking forward. Thus, it requires a lot of forces to be pointing towards the same direction and the whole process is vulnerable to external shocks of the greater university’s strategic plans.
Establishment of HCDE can be traced back till 1974. The department, with its full offering and bold vision, was kicked off by Professors James Souther and Myron White from Engineering and from Humanistic-Social Studies (HCDE, 2009). These two professors from different areas started by extending their Technical Communication course to an interdisciplinary minor offering (HCDE, 2009). As this minor offering grew with increasing numbers of faculty, it first evolved into the Interdisciplinary Program in Scientific and Technical Communication. This first version of the HCDE highlights the important aspects of it: interdisciplinary, scientific and technical, focused on communication.
By 1986, almost 10 years after the minor’s kick-off, the program extended to both master and bachelor degrees. Fast forwarding to 2003, the Graduate Certificate in User-Centered Design was first offered under the minor. This rapid extension of the program both in terms of offerings and size could not be possible if the importance of an interdisciplinary major that focused on communication between the scientific and the non-scientific was not established institution-wide. By 2009, the department officially changed its name to Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) to better reflect their work. In recent years, the department announced a new five-year strategic plan and celebrated their 10th year (HCDE, 2009).
This overall growth of HCDE showcases how change in education policy and offerings start with only a couple of agents on the college campuses. The agents’ mission and vision plays an important role to expand the school to an improved version and move towards becoming internationally recognized.
Long Lasting Research: Laboratories and Research Areas
A department on human design engineering does not only offer courses for engineers but also has the space to establish a longer lasting effect on the academia and the communities they are working with. Establishing a department with secured funding creates a platform of an academic community to take up research on their areas of interest. Thus, the diverse research areas play an important role to further the connection between engineering and human centered design, which aligns with UW’s goal. Thus, UW’s HCDE is a rooftop for bringing together research and laboratories for the interdisciplinary faculty. Therefore, these areas showcase how established research and laboratories can create a long lasting commitment for interdisciplinary research around socio-technical issues and engineering.
HCDE research projects focus on taking an interdisciplinary and sociotechnical approach to “the interaction of people’s practices and meanings with technology” (University of Washington, 2013). HCDE’s research areas create a platform for students and faculty to engage with these different topics in a sustainable manner. These six interrelated areas of study include (University of Washington, 2013):
- Influencing Behavior, Thinking, and Awareness
- Design for Emergent Collaborations and Organizations
- Low Resource and Underserved Populations
- Material and Embodied Technologies
- Data Science and Data Visualization
- Learning in Professional and Technical Environments
Laboratories play an important role to establish a continuous research agenda that will not fluctuate based on faculty. HCDE offers 15 labs and two sub-centers to establish continuous research platforms for students and faculty. These 15 labs include topics from social computational systems to computer supported collaboration, which are eventually the pillars of the department. Among all of 15 offerings, the most relevant to disability studies are the Human-Centered Data Science Laboratory, Inclusive Design Laboratory, Laboratory for Human-Centered Engineering Education, and the Laboratory for Influence in SocioTechnical Systems (University of Washington, 2013).
Case Study #2 : Olin College of Engineering
Olin College takes a different approach to disability studies, one where inclusive design is not a seperate offering or a department, but is built into the core of the understanding of what engineering is. Olin College of Engineering is putting ‘understanding needs’ of their users to the core of a new engineering education method that they are building. Even though their initial starting point is not to further disability studies, their intervention to overall engineering education frameworks creates platforms for the faculty and students to dive into projects that serve the disabled community.
Olin College of Engineering is a private engineering college focused on undergraduate education in Massachusetts. A lot about Olin from its curriculum to culture is an intervention to higher education, as a ‘remaking’ of what college education should be like. The college was kicked off in 1997 by the Olin Foundation and by 2002 it accepted its first class of 75 students (Olin College, 2019). As a new undergraduate engineering program within the United States, the college started off with an endowment of $460 million from the Olin Foundation. With its short history in the education industry, the college succeeded to be ranked the 3rd Best Engineering School in U.S News college rankings (Olin College, 2019).
Among other colleges and institutions that focus on engineering education, Olin College comes into the disability studies and engineering intersection from a different perspective compared to the traditional engineering education. They focus on the mission of “prepar[ing] students to become exemplary engineering innovators who recognize needs, design solutions and engage in creative enterprises for the good of the world” (University of Washington, 2020). The mission itself lays out their tri-fold focus area to rebuild the engineering education: raising their engineers to recognize needs, design solutions, and create enterprises for the good of the world. The tri-fold focus shows how Olin prioritizes their engineers to recognize needs as well as other skills which creates a natural connection with disability studies. For Olin, disability studies is not an outside concept to learn more, but rather the core of engineering, for the good of the world.
The ‘Olin’ Experiment
As a new school with a big endowment, the Olin College is also referred to as ‘the Olin Experiment’ of creating an engineering curriculum from scratch and without the boundaries of traditional education. Thus, Olin is trying to intervene in the existing engineering education and this intervention shows a new approach to disability studies as well. The college refers to this by stating that Olin was founded because “there is a problem with undergraduate engineering education. The traditional curriculum is too narrow; it teaches students how to solve problems, but not how to find the right problems to solve, or how to get their solutions out of the lab and into the world ” (Olin College, 2020a). The college aims to solve this problem by creating a new curriculum and continuously working on improving this curriculum as it progresses.
As the ‘most ambitious experiment in engineering education in the past several decades’ Olin aims to embrace an innovative approach to engineering education to provide more hands-on opportunities for students from day one (Guizzo, 2006). This includes not having academic departments within the school, adopting a tuition free program, and not offering tenure positions to professors (Guizzo, 2006). As doing so, it aims to provide students with interdisciplinary opportunities ‘to go first and then learn’ (Olin College, 2020a). The school uses project-based, experiential learning opportunities for students as the backbone of their education to provide the true essence of engineering.
The Olin Experiment also provides an experimental approach to embracing disability studies. Their experimental approach includes not having faculty departments to provide an interdisciplinary environment for students and having experiential learning as the focus of the curriculum to increase the communication between the community partners and the college. The ‘success’ of the start-up educational organization model will be unfolding as time goes on with their graduates’ employment and grad-school acceptance rates.
Olin’s Holistic Disability Services Approach
Olin College’s disability services also showcases a different approach to colleges’ traditional disability services. This broad mission sets up the stage for Olin’s engineers to be informed on disability and access rights. A college disability service usually focuses on providing accessibility services for those who need it and works on a case by case basis – as it’s the case for Lafayette College. Olin’s disability services work with the students’ unique need to come up with an accommodation for their academic needs. Olin College’s disability services’ mission steps out from only working with students with disabilities and providing them accommodation, to educating the rest of the college community to be aware of the matter.
The colleges’ disability services embrace a mission of “educat[ing] all members of the Olin community around access and disability rights” (Olin College, 2020b). This mission sets out the disability services to a service that works with the whole community to raise awareness. As an engineering-only school, this mission aims to teach about disabilities to all of the community including students, faculty and the staff. This raising awareness goal does not only focus on what disabilities are but also focuses on the rights of people with disabilities. Such a holistic approach creates a basis of having a common language around disabilities established college-wide, for all members of the community. Educating the community is the first step to establish an inclusive environment for both disabled students as well as disabled community partners.
Olin’s disability services also “ascribe to use a social model of disability and we aim to reduce barriers to access” (Olin College, 2020b). This approach to disabilities establishes disability awareness as a key part of diversity on campus, and encourages working with people with disabilities to find solutions for their living standards for both faculty and non-faculty. Thus, the service does not only work for raising awareness, but also works to take action to increase accessibility around the campus, working with community members who are disabled.
Olin’s unique approach to Disability Services creates an outside center working towards increasing awareness about disabilities for their upcoming engineers. Thus, it’s an approach that’s not only for those students who self selected to learn more about disabilities. Olin’s goal is more holistic, in terms of raising awareness for all of their engineers even if this was not an earlier interest of theirs. This is why Olin is also exemplary to showcase results of working with the whole community on raising awareness on disabilities.
Olin’s Disability Projects
Olin’s holistic approach to disability services provides space for the faculty to run different experimental research projects with community partners. The following examples showcase two different projects with the goal of supporting the disabled community. They showcase works of Dr. Ruvolo and Dr. Hendren in Olin College of Engineering.
- Creation of Assistive Technology for the Blind Through Large Scale Co-Design
In September 2020, Dr. Paul Ruvolo from Olin College of Engineering was awarded a three year grant of $343K to develop an orientation and mobility app to provide indoor navigation and exploration technology for blind and visually impaired users (Olin College, 2020d).
Prof. Ruvolo is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Olin. Prof. Ruvolo and his students work “closely with people who are blind to design technologies that are responsive to them as people” (Olin College, 2020e). Their project is building an assistive indoor navigation system as an app for better navigation for the blind community.
As a part of this work, the team works with blind people to identify their needs as they go about their day and interact with various artifacts that are created for able people. The team highlights that the challenges that visually imparired face “are not intrinsically linked to visual impairment, but rather are the result of environments that are not built with people who are blind or visually impaired in mind and prejudices that exist towards these groups”(Olin College, 2020e). Thus, as they work to build for blind people, the team also focuses on understanding the existing design constraints as well as the biases that the blind community faces.
Through the grant Prof. Ruvolo received, he will also have the opportunity to teach a course centered on assistive technology and user-centered design where students will be working directly with the community members (Olin College, 2020e). Meanwhile, it will also expand to creating faculty development workshops for building learning experiences that integrate engineering, design, and accessibility content. Besides building a project that can be implemented in real life, the grant will also enable academic inquiries to teach the community about disabilities and build an assistive community (Olin College, 2020e). .
- Adaptation+Ability Group Lab
The adaptation+ability group is “a technical and social laboratory for creative research on technology + the body at Olin College” (Olin College, 2020c). The lab runs research on the encounters between humans and the built environment that are designed with ‘the normal body’ in mind. Thus, the laboratory creates space for students and faculty to engage with the history of disabled bodies interacting with technologies that are built for abled bodies, as well as diving into better understanding how to design for disabled bodies.
The Lab is directed by Sara Hendren, who is the author of What Can a Body Do? How we Meet the Built World. She teaches human centered design at Olin College. She’s a leading academic in disability studies. Her leadership in the Lab creates a platform for her students to explore the connections between technology and bodies. She uses the following guidelines as the “manifesto” of the lab (Olin College, 2020c):
- We use the terms “adaptive” and “assistive” technologies interchangeably when speaking casually or with newcomers to this field, but we use the terms of adaptation as often as possible.
- We presume competence. This exhortation is a central one in disability rights circles, and we proceed with it in mind as we work with our design partners.
- We work in public. Doing open and public research—including in the early stages—is central to our conviction that design for disability carries with it enormous political and cultural stakes.
- We spend some of our time making things, and some of our time making things happen.
- We actively seek a condition of orchestrated adjacencies: in topics, scales, and methods.
- We presume, always, that technology is never neutral.
Under this manifesto, the Lab accomplishes a wide range of projects. A few examples of projects this research lab has conducted are ramps with kinetic lights, a collapsible podium made for a professor with dwarfism, and an arm/shoulder prosthetic specifically for an engineer in the class who likes to rock climb and bike. The Lab provides a space for students to engage with people with disabilities to break “typical assumptions among young technically minded designers about disability” (Aplusa, 2020).
Please click here to access Phase 2: Lafayette Audit.