Project Description:
The aim of the Disability Studies Program (DSP) is to develop and integrate disability studies curricula across disciplines and departments university-wide. The CDPI Director has been appointed the Director of the Disability Studies Program and chairs the university-wide Disability Studies Steering Committee that includes faculty and students from across campus. Committee members work collaboratively to increase the awareness of students and faculty about disability-related issues through expanding disability studies course offerings and offering additional educational opportunities for the campus and community. The Disability Studies Program has been made a permanent program in the Undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington The DSP currently offers an undergraduate Disability Studies minor and Disability Studies major through Individualized Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. The program offers four core courses: Disability & Society: An Introduction to Disabilities Studies; Disability Law, Policy, & the Community; Civil & Human Rights Law for People with Disabilities: National and International Perspectives; and the Advanced Seminar in Disability Studies. In addition, we have been successful in offering four additional courses sponsored by existing academic departments and schools bioethics, rehabilitation medicine, and law. Two courses have also been developed and offered through the Study Abroad program; one undergraduate course on assistive technology in Brazil and the other a graduate course in the rights of the children with disabilities to health in Cambodia.
The DSP was awarded a President's Diversity Appraisal Implementation Fund to develop and provide the Disability Studies Curriculum Transformation Seminar to UW faculty. The DSP has offered annual conferences on topics of importance to advancing disability rights, addressing such issues as eugenics and disability, disability rights in Asia, human and disability rights internationally, and the ethics of medical treatments on individuals with ID/DD.
