Beyond Ableism Professional Development Series: Student Panel
The Office of Inclusive Excellence values student perspectives. We believe in transparency, along with consistent reflexivity, as a way to improve campus climate. Toward these ends, the link above includes perspectives from Penn State Abington students. These quotes were garnered from sessions where students thought with faculty and staff about how schools in general, and Abington specifically, could engender and maintain practices to make classrooms and campuses more accessible for students with disabilities. Since PSU Abington takes students' voices seriously, we have already begun to implement some of the suggestions and will continue to think with students as we work toward improving our inclusive policies, practices, and pedagogies. Finally, this is a living document. The Office of Inclusive Excellence encourages students to contact the Director of Inclusive Excellence with further thoughts as they arise.
Program Specific Resources
This link includes an amalgamation of resources collected by various programs available at Abington. The purpose of this page is to document how disciplines across the University intersect with questions of disabilities through a variety of resources, from books and articles to videos and art exhibits. This is a living document, so please feel free to visit this page as it grows and/or to contact the Director of Inclusive Excellence to contribute to it.
Neurodiverse Students, Syllabi, and Classroom Culture
Dr. Robin Roscingo earned her Ph.D. in Education Theory, Organization and Policy at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education in 2023. Robin’s work focuses on the history of autism treatment. She utilizes a critical disability study lens to raise questions about ableist logics that often permeate autism intervention. As a seasoned special educator and parent advocate, she brings a nuanced, practice-driven approach to her scholarship.
In this session, Dr. Roscigno shares her expertise on how to write syllabi that foreground equity and access for neurodiverse students. Participants were asked to consider bringing syllabi in progress and other materials to be better prepared for their upcoming classes to work together to build and maintain inclusive classroom communities with neurodiverse student needs in mind.
Deconstructing Ableism at Abington: A Conversation with Chavonne Campbell
Deconstructing Ableism at Abington: A conversation with Chavonne Campbell Transcript
Chavonne Campbell is the Student Disability Resources Coordinator at Penn State Abington. She is a graduate of West Chester University with a B.A. in Psychology, a Minor in Sociology, and also a Master of Science in Social Work. Chavonne has had over 20 years of experience in Social Service and Education working with individuals across the lifespan from various cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds and so forth.
Deconstructing Ableism in Institutions: A Conversation with Dr. Nirmala Erevelles
Deconstructing Ableism in Institutions: A Conversation with Dr. Nirmala Erevelles Transcript
Dr. Nirmala Erevelles (she/her) is a nationally recognized professor of social and cultural studies in education. Her teaching and research interests lie in the areas of disability studies, critical race theory, transnational feminism, sociology of education, and postcolonial studies. Specifically, her research focuses on the unruly, messy, unpredictable and taboo body – a habitual outcast in educational (and social) contexts. In this video, Dr. Erevelles discusses some of the ideas that she feels are critical to interrupting ableist norms and values to create more accessible, welcoming campus communities.