Transition to the Technical Work Force Marco Midon, a lead engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.), is totally blind. Tim Scamparinno, a project manager at I.B.M., is spinal cord injured and a wheelchair rider. Jacquelyn Wilson , a biotechnology and laboratory science major at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is profoundly deaf.
Jacquelyn, Tim, and Marco are among hundreds of individuals with disabilities whose lives have been changed by the A.A.A.S. Project on Science, Technology and Disability.
They are more than three hundred students with disabilities who have served over four hundred internships in ENTRY POINT!, one of the Project's core programs. ENTRY POINT! may be the Project's best-known effort to open the doors of science and engineering to a vast pool of talent and creativity that previously had been excluded.
ENTRY POINT! continues a long heritage -- described in this thirtieth anniversary history – in which the Project has worked in many different ways to improve the entry and advancement of individuals with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.).
“The project kept evolving by anticipating issues and seizing opportunities that flowed from a coherent vision of what equity meant for persons with disabilities,” said Dr. Shirley Malcom, who heads the A.A.A.S. Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs.
“We have enjoyed strong and stable leadership,” Malcom added. “I think that having all of the groups together in the Directorate (women, minorities, persons with disabilities) made us a lot more savvy because the ‘rights movements' for the different groups were at different stages of development. We could learn from each other.
“[When the laws were passed] we were happy to have the laws, but we were not naïve enough to think this solved our problems. We learned a long time ago that laws LET things happen but do not MAKE things happen.”
Transition to the Technical Work Force Virginia W. Stern, now Director of the project, started ENTRY POINT! in 1996, after observing a perplexing situation. Laws and changes in attitudes in academe were fostering bumper crops of highly-qualified students with disabilities. Barriers remained, however, in their transition from school to workplace and careers.
“We knew that students with disabilities excelled academically and were getting degrees,” Stern said. “However, that was not enough to get employment.”
Stern traces ENTRY POINT!'s origins to 1990-1991, when A.A.A.S. received a 5 year grant from the N.S.F. Engineering Directorate: Access to Engineering: Recruitment and Retention of Students and Faculty with Disabilities.
In the course of this project, Stern visited colleges of engineering and organizations such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (A.B.E.T.) and the American Society for Engineering Education (A.S.E.E.). She discovered that there were many students with disabilities in engineering colleges, especially students with learning and other non-apparent disabilities. However, those students did not have a track record of getting jobs in technical fields after they received their degrees.
In 1996, N.A.S.A. approached Stern to recruit students with disabilities for paid internships at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland . Gallaudet College had previously managed the project, but only for students who were deaf. Stern agreed, on the condition that A.A.A.S. would recruit nationally and would include students with all disabilities. N.A.S.A. also would have to assign a mentor to each student.
Stern also suggested a new name for the Goddard internships – Achieving Competence in Computing, Engineering, and Space Sciences (A.C.C.E.S.S.). N.A.S.A. agreed, and increased funding was earmarked for the effort. The first year was so successful that, next, N.A.S.A. asked A.A.A.S. to include internships in all 7 of its major centers.
In 1997, I.B.M. contacted Stern about establishing a similar internship program. She named it ENTRY POINT! – convinced that successful participation in an internship, would be the entry point to employment or to graduate school.
ENTRYPOINT! internships are designed for students with disabilities who are studying science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and other quantitatively based fields such as finance and economics. In addition to competitive salaries and whatever accommodations may be needed, students benefit from mentors who provided advice on future coursework and career plans.
With new skills and real-world work experience on their resumes and graduate school applications – and an increased sense of self-confidence -- ENTRY POINT! interns flourish in careers that otherwise might have been difficult to enter in years past.
About 90% of the internship recipients are now actively working in science, technology, engineering or business positions, or are pursuing graduate degrees in relevant fields. The recipients give ENTRYPOINT! the credit for opening the door to those careers.
In 2001, A.A.A.S. received the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring for its work with ENTRY POINT!
In announcing the awards, the White House noted: “Those being honored have provided encouragement and guidance through their wisdom, motivation and coaching, and have opened doors and provided resources to a significant number of students at the Kindergarden through twelfth grade, undergraduate, or graduate level from groups traditionally underrepresented in science, mathematics, and engineering.”
From the beginning, the influence of the A.A.A.S. Project on Science, Technology, and Disability on policies, programs, and practices was critical in moving forward many of the initiatives for people with disabilities and S.T.E.M.. At all times the Project shares resources and connections on policy issues and coping strategies in education and career advancement in technical fields.
The timeline shows how AAAS programs and publications were in advance or in parallel with major movements in civil rights and legislations for persons with disabilities and also promoted and reflected progress in assistive technology.
Roots of the Project John J. Gavin was a biochemist with a case to make. He wrote a letter to William D. Carey, A.A.A.S. executive officer, suggesting that the association add handicapped issues to the A.A.A.S. Office of Opportunities in Science. Janet Brown then directed the office, which the A.A.A.S. Board of Directors established in 1973 to increase the number of women and minorities in science and engineering and the opportunities available to them. The office's role expanded in 1975 to include scientists and engineers with disabilities.
Gavin who held a master's degree, became profoundly deaf as an adult. Nevertheless, he got a P.h.D. from Rutgers University, and had an outstanding career with several pharmaceutical companies.
Gavin was a rare success story among people who were deaf, blind, wheelchair riders, or had other physical disabilities. They faced long odds in just getting a basic education, let alone pursuing careers in science. Never one to parse words, Gavin recalled the 1970s mindset:
“Discrimination is widespread. It is difficult to obtain an education. It is difficult to obtain employment. Some thirty-five years experience has convinced me that scientists, despite their claims of objectivity, are the biggest offenders.
We are all aware that scientific and technical work can be exclusively intellectual in nature, scope and content. The sine qua non of such work is intellectual competence. One might logically assume that substance would take precedence over the form in which it is packaged. This should be particularly true in a society which needs all the help it can get in resolving its significant problems.
Alas, even though it can be demonstrated empirically that ‘brains' do come packaged in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes, ‘objective' scientific types often exclude from their fraternity individuals whose package design may be different or faulty without regard to the quality of the contents – many times despite the quality of its contents. Low expectation of performance, not actual performance is the common reason – literal prejudice!”
Carey and Brown wondered about the extent of the need. Nobody knew how many members of A.A.A.S., the world's largest general scientific organization, and its affiliates, had disabilities. They suggested he organize a panel on the topic at the A.A.A.S. Annual Meeting. Gavin sent letters to scientific journals, asking members with disabilities to identify themselves and lend a hand with the meeting and other work. He quickly received ample responses to move ahead with the symposium, entitled “The Physically Disabled Scientist: Potential and Problems.”
1975: A Watershed Symposium A.A.A.S. meeting attendees expect topics at the crest of the science's advancing wave. But few expected a panel presentation that was destined to change almost every major scientific conference in the country; fostering unprecedented innovations in university classrooms, laboratories, and scientific workplaces; and putting a generation of new students on the road to scientific careers.
The 1975 symposium on scientists with disabilities did that. It helped foster a profound transformation in attitudes about individuals with physical disabilities that were deeply entrenched in generations of scientists, teachers, industrial Research and Development managers, and corporate cultures.
It was a modest event, with barely two dozen people in the audience. None of the six presenters were scientific superstars.
The New York symposium brought together two other individuals who would have key roles in A.A.A.S.' pioneering efforts to advance opportunities for people with disabilities in science and engineering. One was Martha Redden Ozer. Just finishing a doctorate in educational psychology, Ozer was an intern at the Department of Education. Brown asked her to facilitate the New York panel, with the possibility of later running a new disabilities program in the A.A.A.S. Office of Opportunities in Science. The other was Virginia Stern. She and her husband Bob, who was active in AAAS activities, had children with disabilities. Stern was a graduate of Stanford who also had a degree in deaf education.
Ozer became the first director of what was then called the A.A.A.S. Project on the Handicapped. Stern joined the project's fulltime staff in 1978, and worked with Ozer as the Program's name changed to the A.A.A.S. Project on Science, Technology and Disability. When Ozer left in 1986 to resume a career in clinical psychology, Stern became the Project Director. In 1980, Janet Brown left, and Shirley Malcom, who had worked at A.A.A.S. and N.S.F. on minority science programs, became Head of the Office of Opportunities in Science and, in 1989, the Head of the A.A.A.S. Education and Human Resources Programs Directorate. In 1991, Laureen Summers, a woman with cerebral palsy who had worked with several independent living organizations, joined the team.
Boston : Breaking Down Conference Barriers After the New York symposium, Ozer obtained a National Science Foundation (N.S.F.) grant to identify other scientists with disabilities. Hundreds of responses to her questionnaire poured in, and became the basis for unprecedented changes at the 1976 A.A.A.S. national meeting in Boston .
Attendance at scientific meetings is important for scientists and engineers. Scientists present and hear new research findings at these events and keep current with their fields. In addition, meetings provide for social contact and networking, which contribute much to an individual's career and professional development.
A.A.A.S. realized that excluding individuals from those meetings because of disability was a detriment to the careers of scientists and to the career prospects of science students.
Bill Carey decided that A.A.A.S. would change beginning with Boston , and hold the nation's first major scientific meeting accessible to individuals with disabilities. Ozer organized an Advisory Group that included Brown, people with disabilities, rehabilitation experts, scientists and others from the Boston academic community. Project staff and the A.A.A.S. Meetings office worked with hotels designated as official housing for the meeting and convention center officials to make facilities accessible.
The meeting included a symposium on science, technology and disability and a resource and information center for individuals with disabilities. Open throughout the meeting, the Resource Room served as the central access point for providing assistance to attendees with disabilities.
Staff in the room arranged oral and sign language interpreters for registrants who were deaf, program and signage readers for participants who were blind, people to escort attendees in wheelchairs, and even wheelchair repairs. Every A.A.A.S. national meeting since then has been barrier-free, with similar facilities and services.
Commitment from the Top Margaret Mead, the noted anthropologist and then A.A.A.S. president, had her presidential address simultaneously interpreted through sign language. By strongly endorsing efforts to make science more accessible, Mead initiated a pattern followed by other A.A.A.S. elected and administrative officials.
The A.A.A.S. chief made a point of visiting the Resource Rooms at the national meetings, to engage with the staff and scientists with disabilities. Succeeding executive officers, including Dr. Alan I. Leshner, the current C.E.O., have continued that practice.
Advocates for Change... A.A.A.S. did more than establish the model for barrier-free scientific meetings. It became the advocate for making barrier-free meetings the standard throughout science and engineering societies. Brown, Ozer, Malcom, and Stern encouraged the 280 affiliates, academies of science and other component organizations in A.A.A.S. to make their meetings accessible.
They went beyond advocacy on accessibility to make the how-to-do-it knowledge available to meeting organizers. In 1976, A.A.A.S. published Barrier Free Meetings , which became the standard text on organizing and holding an accessible scientific meeting.
This book offered detailed advice, based on 3 crucial lessons-learned from organizing the Boston meeting:
Barrier Free Meetings became A.A.A.S.'s best-selling book, with copies snapped up not just by scientific organizations but also by government agencies, colleges, and other organizations seeking information on compliance with Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which meant that colleges and universities would have to provide equal access to educational opportunities to qualified students with disabilities.
An Era of Change In 1975 the U.S. Congress had passed legislation now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (I.D.E.A.), which required that all children with disabilities be provided a free and appropriate education. The Rehabilitation Act had already been passed in 1973, but regulations implementing Section 504 were not issued until May 1977. The regulations proposed by what then was the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (H.E.W.) sparked controversy.
Some colleges and universities claimed the costs of making their facilities and programs accessible would lead to bankruptcy. They lobbied for less stringent regulations. Disability rights advocates mounted their own campaign for strong regulations. At one point in the contentious debate, individuals with disabilities occupied the H.E.W.'s offices in San Francisco – with extensive national media coverage -- for almost four weeks.
A.A.A.S. worked behind the scenes with the American Council on Education, individual colleges and universities, congressional staff and committees, and regulation writers to assure effective regulations. Some of the most important efforts involved reassurance that schools could be made accessible at modest cost.
A Resourceful Group One of the project's signature efforts in those early years was formation of the A.A.A.S. Resource Group of Handicapped Scientists. The Resource Group facilitated communication and interaction among scientists and engineers with disabilities, science students, teachers, school systems employers, the news media, and others. From its 4 charter members -- John Gavin, a bacteriologist, Edward C. Keller, a geneticist, S. Phyllis Stearner, a zoologist, and Thomas Austin, an ecologist – the Resource Group quickly grew to more than 900 men and women.
The Resource Group became a key part of A.A.A.S.'s advocacy for strong regulations to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Former HEW Secretary Joseph Califano established a Task Force to draft the regulations, and Ozer met with the group several times.
One meeting delved into the history of post-secondary services and several presenters insisted that “worthy” students with disabilities – presumably individuals who were bright and capable – already were getting all the necessary services. Ozer asked members of the Resource Group to become a truth squad, and wrote Califano to describe their own experiences.
They provided a strong dose of reality, with comments such as:
Robert S. Menchel, a physicist with the Xerox Corporation, was one of the initial group of scientists with disabilities that Ozer identified. Totally deaf since childhood, Menchel was aware that science could be the perfect career for individuals with disabilities. Menchel took a year's leave of absence from Xerox and lead off one of the AAAS's signature efforts for individual with disabilities – the Role Model Project.
Menchel's work led to an expansion of the Role Model Project, which enlisted hundreds of scientists who served as “existence proofs,” mentors, and encouraged students to pursue science careers.
Nansie Sharpless, an early participant in the AAAS Role Model Project, was a deaf biochemist from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York . Sharpless encouraged the American Chemical Society to become the first AAAS affiliated society to ask members with disabilities to serve as role models.
Affirmation Federal law finally caught up with the leadership on disability rights that the AAAS and other organizations had sustained by now for almost 20 years. In 1990, the U.S. Congress completed the sea change initiated by Section 504, as Congress passed the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (A.D.A.). On July 26, 1990 , Stern and Summers, along with one thousand other advocates for people with disabilities, were on the White House lawn for the historic signing.
That legislation extended the civil rights protections of Section 504 to employment in the private sector. In doing so, it expanded accessibility requirements to transportation, public accommodations (such as meeting places, lodgings, restaurants, and museums), services provided by state and local governments, and telecommunications. Those who were affected now number between 52 and 58 million Americans, roughly one person in five, who have at least one disability.
Shirley Malcom remembers it as a powerful affirmation of the A.A.A.S.'s vision and foresight. “A.A.A.S. policies led to accessible hotels before there was a law,” she said. “A.A.A.S. programs pushed for a focus on abilities not just disabilities. And this was way ahead of anyone else. Malcom continues:
“As the series of laws began to require physical and programmatic access to education at Kindergarden through twelve (1975) and then higher education levels (1977), and in public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications (1990), the situation for persons began to shift. But each step involved a struggle, for example, to dispel the belief that persons with disabilities could not do science and engineering, that they represented a safety concern in labs, that they were intellectually incapable of succeeding in such rigorous fields. In many cases access included whether one could get to the campus, into the building, classroom, laboratory, and toilets not just being accepted into the program. Lack of access to interpreters for deaf and hearing impaired students or to readers for blind, visually, and print impaired students were all barriers to overcome.
“But each challenge was met. Scientists and engineers with disabilities were identified and served as role models, consultants, advisors, and mentors. Institutions learned how to provide accommodations (after all, it was the law). Perhaps the greatest advances came with the emergence and evolution of computer based technologies, Suddenly distance, socialization, access to text and so on, were no longer issues. And increasing numbers of students who, 30 or even 20 years earlier, would have been written off, were pursuing education in rigorous S.T.E.M. fields. Legal requirements, persistent advocacy, and the advance of technology made much of this possible,”
A.A.A.S. would like to acknowledge all who have worked "to make it happen" - the scientists, engineers, students, families, educators, designers, inventors, interpreters, readers, relay operators, employers, legislators, role models, and advocates.
Text by Michael Woods, Virginia Stern and Shirley Malcom
Timeline consultant: John Kemp, J.D.