Disability Studies and Action Collaborative

Disability Culture, Scholarship, and Community

ICDS Co-Directors 2024 Year-End Message

ICDS Co-Directors 2024 Year-End Message

Thank you to everyone who has supported our work up to now. We only exist because of this network of students, faculty, staff, and community members who continue to work alongside us as part of a disability studies and action collaborative. The Institute for Critical Disability Studies has formed to represent a group of disabled and nondisabled people, working together to advance disability studies scholarship, personal advocacy, and a pro-disability community.
 
We want to share a few updates as the year comes to an end. But before we do, we’d like to take a moment to note that you can always support the ICDS by donating to our WWU Foundation Fund. Contributions help fund our student scholarships and programming throughout the year. 
 
 
Let’s celebrate some of our accomplishments in 2024:
 

The Critical Disability Studies Program Continues to Expand

  • Since January 2024, 18 more students have declared the CDS minor

  • We offered 9 DISA courses and enrolled more than 200 students in those courses in 2024 alone 

  • We submitted a curriculum proposal for a brand new DISA 201 GUR course titled, Stories of Disability in the World, and we expect for the full approval to be completed in early 2025 for offering in the coming academic year. 

  • We welcomed Kyann Flint to Western as a new faculty member teaching DISA courses with us, starting in Fall 2024

  • 6 faculty throughout Western taught DISA courses and cross-lists in a variety of modalities, from face-to-face to online, to increase access to disability-centering coursework:

    • Daman Wandke (Educational Leadership and Inclusive Teaching)
    • Kristen Chmieleski (Health and Human Development)
    • Pam Kuntz (Dance)
    • Andrew Lucchesi (English)
    • Lindsey Foreman-Murry (Special Education)
    • Kyann Flint (Critical Disability Studies)
 

We Supported Students and Community Members through scholarships, fellowships, and employment

  • Scholarships awarded:

    • The Mark West Scholarship, made possible by a generous donation by WWU Trustee Maureen West

      • Cori Foster (MA program in Rehabilitation Counseling)

      • Kimberly Miller (Human Services, CDS minor)

    • The Critical Disability Studies Minor Scholarship, Made possible by your individual donations to the ICDS Scholarship Fund in previous years’ Give Days

      • Remi Rogoff (Urban Planning and Sustainable Development, CDS minor)

  • We also awarded three 2024 ICDS Fellowships, each one supporting a community project to be launched in 2025: 

    • Chapi Alfaro— Project: Mental Health and Community Support for Latinx community in Tri Cities, Jan 22nd, 2025

    • Alexander Jones—Project: Disability and Accessibility Hackathon, Feb 15th – 16th, 2025

    • Steve Hickenbottom—Project: Accessibility Aid School Pantry, Jan-Feb 2025

  • We worked with 5 amazing graduate students (read about our graduate students, staff, and collaborators here)  

    • Spike Osadchuk (Anthropology)
    • Eden Chapman (Education)
    • Lorraine Floyd (Rehabilitation Counseling)
    • Fred Engelfried (Urban Design)

    • Sarah Lucas-Page (Music)

  • We employed more than a dozen undergraduate students for short-term UnConference support, ICDS Student Advisory Council leadership, Summer Assistantships, and Programming and Workshop Development
 

ICDS hosted a wide range of programming and events over the past year

  • We hosted our 4th Annual UnConference on October 19th-20th, 2024. The UnConference is our annual event where we bring together students, faculty, staff, and community members to discuss disability issues in our community. It includes two days of programming. On day 1, participants engage in expert-led workshops, and on day 2 everyone gives a presentation on their specific disability interests. 

    • This year we had exceptionally high levels of interest, and we expanded the attendance up around 40%. This is a big achievement for us, since it represents an increase in the scope of our work in the community. The UnConference is becoming a well-known fixture of the disability studies and advocacy community in the region, and our attendance numbers show this. We were able to support this increased size with the excellent support of our student staff. 

    • We pride ourselves on the UnConference being for and by disabled people. This year, according to our surveys, over 80% of attendees identified as disabled some or all of the time. This is a huge achievement for our event in that it actually represents the interests and needs of our disabled community. We truly work toward the disability-empowerment principle “Nothing About Us Without Us!“

  • We welcomed two invited Keynote speakers, who presented at Western both in-person and virtually.  You can find recordings of their presentations published on our webpage, linked below:

  • In Spring, 2024, we launched our first Scholars Week Student Showcase, a symposium featuring the work of 9 amazing student presenters engaging in scholarly and creative work around disability and access at Western.

  • We also held teaching workshops on two disability-related pedagogy topics.  These virtual workshops were each attended by more than 50 people; follow-up resources and workshop recordings will be available on our website for those who would like to revisit the material.

    • In Winter 2024, we held Ethical and Effective Attendance Policies 

    • In Fall 2024, we held Supporting Neurodivergent Students in the Classroom (resource page coming soon)

  • We hosted nearly 3 dozen support and discussion group meetings since January 2024.  These drop-in meetings are held virtually, and are free and open to the community.

    • The Disability Pedagogy Group focuses on disabled teachers and supporting disabled students

    • The Disability Justice Collaborative focuses on community support and local issues
 
 
This is just a partial list of our work in 2024. Thanks again to those who worked with us and contributed to these successes. 
 
 

Crossing into 2025

We have many things to get excited about for the future. 

  • One is to spread the word about the ICDS Student Advisory Council. This amazing student group does important work building disability community for students. They also hold a place of authority within the Institute itself as an advisory body that helps us better support student needs throughout our work. The Winter ICDS SAC meetings will be on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month, at 4:30 pm, starting January 15. Visit their webpage or follow on social media for meetings and how to get involved.

  • We are also excited for our partnership with the Western Gallery for their upcoming exhibit, Embodiment, opening January 7th. ICDS will be hosting a speaker event connected to the Gallery exhibit on February 6th, 2025. 

  • Finally, mark your calendar for the January 12th screening of Crutch, hosted by Kuntz and Co. and co-sponsored by the ICDS. Faculty, Staff, and Community members can use the discount code DISA to purchase reduced-price tickets.  WWU Students can use the discount code VIKINGS to purchase their tickets for free!
 
Thank you for being part of our work this year. We are excited to support disability community at Western and beyond in 2025. 
 

Sincerely,

Andrew and GIM

lucchea@wwu.edu and mcgrewg2@wwu.edu at icds@wwu.edu

Posting as

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *