Grant will help university serve more students with disabilities

A new alliance forming at the University of Missouri-Kansas City will open more doors for individuals to study in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
     UMKC Institute for Human Development and School of Computing and Engineering recently announced receiving a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to bring more youth and veterans with disabilities to fields where there is a high need across the country.

“This will focus on people with disabilities – recognizing the tremendous capabilities, and maybe underestimated capabilities of people with disabilities,” said Ronda Jenson, research director for the UMKC Institute for Human Development. 
    

The project is part of the school’s effort to increase the STEMS workforce by reaching out to women, minority populations and those not traditionally represented in STEM fields, said Kevin Truman, UMKC School of Computing and Engineering dean.
     “The networks of support that UMKC will develop in this project are critical for students’ success and significantly build the capacity of UMKC and the community,” Truman said in a statement.
     The project is called KC-BANCS, based off the name of the grant proposal “Building an Alliance for New Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math: A Collaborative Model for the Inclusion of Youth and Veterans With Disabilities.”
     The grant will be provided for five years. It is expected that 80 high school students and about 110 veterans with disabilities will enter college STEM programs and gain KC-BANCS support, Jenson said.

Over the course of five years, the project will collaborate with STEM educators and community organizations, including Metropolitan Community College Business and Technology Campus and Kansas City Kansas Community College’s Division of Engineering, Math and Science.

UMKC will work with area community colleges to help build support and encourage students to enter STEM fields and provide help for transferring to a four-year school, Jenson said. Eventually the project will reach out to high school students with disabilities, Jenson said.
     UMKC will work with individuals who have physical or sensory disabilities, are on the autism spectrum, have acquired a disability through military service, or have psychiatric disabilities, said Jenson, who will serve as co-principal investigator of the program with Truman.

The project also will provide opportunities for faculty members to learn more about universal design for instruction, or designing lessons and evaluations to work for every student.

“It is providing faculty with strategies to test out in their classroom on how to teach the diversity of all learners and come up with better matches for different styles of learners,” Jenson said.    

“The high expectations are still there. It’s about providing those reasonable accommodations.”
     One of those accommodations was providing a laptop computer for a student with Tourette syndrome to type exam answers in Truman’s class.
     “It was impossible for that student to sit and write an exam with pen and paper,” Truman said. “But I could give him a computer. … One thing disabled students bring to our field is the opportunity to try to find new ways to teach to people and move STEM into a group of individuals who have often times thought it was something they couldn’t achieve or couldn’t do.

“I see this as a real opportunity in the engineering field for us to explore new technology to help the disabled, not just from a teaching standpoint but also from a technology and an engineering standpoint.”
KC-BANCS also will include efforts to provide career exploration and internship opportunities for students.
Eventually, the project will offer a peer-mentoring program that will pair older STEM students with new STEM students to help them with needs they may have, Jenson said.
     “When you teach someone how to learn something, you grow,” Jenson said.

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