Education Is Accessibility, Part I [read the transcript]

To get started with accessibility, I wanted a big picture of where accessibility fits into the larger institution. Arron Wings, Dean of  Learning and Library Services, came in to talk me through some of the changes he’s seen and opportunities we discover when framing our minds to accommodate everyone.

Next week, we’ll go deeper into the Accommodation Services section of Learning Services.

Learn more about the Learning Services Department at Kirkwood.

Book Reference: College Success for Students with Disabilities, Irene Ingersoll
Movie Reference: Hidden Figures (2016)

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Education Is Accessibility, Part I TRANSCRIPT

ARRON WINGS
…have persons with disabilities be part of the conversation at the beginning.

ALAN PETERKA
Hey, everyone. I’m Alan Peterka, and this is Education Is, a podcast about people engaged in teaching and learning. Today I am climbing up to some of the higher rungs of this establishment to get a big picture perspective of the issues and all the moving parts related to accessibility. My guest today is Arron Wings, Dean of Learning and Library Services. Arron, thanks so much for coming to talk with me.

ARRON WINGS
Thank you for having me.

ALAN PETERKA
I kind of want to start with how you see accessibility fitting in here at the institution.

ARRON WINGS
All institutions face this issue of our business is education, our business is learning. Students come to us, and instructors, too, and staff, but they all come to us from a different place. Those students or instructors with disabilities come from a place that historically was a lesser place that we as an institution, as a culture, we didn’t put a lot of focus on what their needs were, and we didn’t make a lot of attempts to make sure that they had the same access or equal access to opportunities that others. Through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and then the 2000s, there was a cultural awareness and a shift where we did try to … our adopted goal was to provide them equal access. So I think it’s changing. I think our efforts and our energies have been increased, and our expectations of what persons with disabilities can expect when they show up to an institution like ours has changed. I think that is a really good thing.

ALAN PETERKA
Talk a little bit about your own department, so all of Learning Services and all the different piece … because there’s quite a bit in there, right? We call it Learning Services, but there’s a whole bunch of little pieces to that.

ARRON WINGS
There is, and I think it’s a great department here at Kirkwood. It’s all the academic support, but we have tutoring, and having that interaction around learning and having ideas or concepts presented by a different person than the instructor or a different way than the textbook does it really allows students to do better in their classes, to master the content. Another department is Accommodation Services. The role of that is to meet with students who have disabilities, identify those barriers that they have to education, and then work with that student. That can be through extended test time; that can be through additional tutoring; that can be applying different technologies and delivering the content differently. So we have a variety of things that we can do with that.

We also have testing services within our department. That covers everything from the placement test that students take when they first come to Kirkwood to the academic assessments with classes. If they do receive accommodation for a quiet testing room or additional testing time, that is handled at the Test Center. They also support other academic programs. If there is a program that uses a particular vendor test to do their assessment, or if there’s a licensure or a certification that is connected to that program, a lot of that is done at the Testing Center as well.

We also have the TRiO Student Support Services portion of the department. That’s grant funded. It’s designed to help underrepresented populations make the adjustment to college, to higher education, and succeed. The populations that we serve there overlaps with Accommodation Services because one of the qualifying criteria can be having a disability. You can also qualify for that program by being low-income or being a first generation student, which would be that neither of your parents graduated from a four-year school. Within Accommodation Services, we have the Assistive Technology Lab that provides a place where students can come and learn about technology, learn how to use technologies. If it’s a technology that they need to use on an ongoing basis, they can come in and use it there.

The last program we have is the VITAL Program, which is actually a collaboration with Grant Wood and Kirkwood and the local high schools. It’s commonly called a Plus One, where students who are on an IEP or use a resource room in high school and are transitioning to a career in technical education field can receive support for that first year in college and help them make that transition from maybe a more structured and highly accommodating experience at the high school level and making that adjustment to a less structured, more independent college experience that provides different accommodations and not the same ones that are in high school.

ALAN PETERKA
So lots of resources for students. Obviously, also instructors are coming to Learning Services in some capacity to learn about what their students are needing. Are there programs that you’re reaching out to different departments and trying to educate or help provide services there as well?

ARRON WINGS
There are very much. I think one of the ways that we reach out to departments is collaborative learning days. We always have a good amount of sessions, and I think we get a really good turnout for those sessions. A couple of years ago we instituted a faculty advisory group, so there’s a representative from each academic department that meets with us twice a semester. They serve as kind of both a sounding board, feedback process, and liaison to the department of changes that we’re going through. We also are just starting to work with all the career and technical education departments, work with them to identify within their program what are the skills, what are the physical and cognitive levels that we want our students both to have when they come to the program and when they leave the program. And not just from a “this is what every student needs to know” — but I do think every student needs to know that — but also from the viewpoint of if a person with a disability does not meet one of those that we’ve defined, then that gives us a really solid footing from looking at accommodations for whatever one of those that they might not need.

ALAN PETERKA
Will the outcome of those meetings potentially be a better shopping experience for students so that they’ll know?

ARRON WINGS
Exactly. That’s the goal, because I think in education, particularly on the career and technical education side, you have students who have some kind of vision of what a career in pet grooming or electrical technology or … they have an idea of what that career might be, but that’s typically an uninformed. So I think this where you get to the place where now you’re a student shopping, making that decision of where am I going to invest my time and my money, and I think having that clearly delineated, this is what you’ll be doing, really gives them that kind of first reality check of is that really what I want to sign up for.

ALAN PETERKA
How did you find yourself in Learning Services? Is this something you’ve thought about being a part of for a long time?

ARRON WINGS
It’s in a roundabout way is how I came here. My first career was in human services in a community. I worked at several community agencies in the Corridor. My wife was also in human services, and we thought one of us probably needed to make a change. So I looked at some other career options, and that took me to library sciences, so I was in libraries before I came to Learning Services. I came to Kirkwood, fell in love with the community college mission and what we were doing here, and became the Dean of Library Services. Then as more schools were looking at the learning commons, the bringing all the academic support, learning services under one umbrella, I talked with Bill Lamb, the Vice President of Academic Affairs, about how that would look at Kirkwood. Three and a half years ago, there was a retirement of a longtime Dean of Learning Services, and that was our opportunity to bring those two units together and work closely together. They felt that my previous experience in human services would contribute to that role, so that was why I was a fit for that.

ALAN PETERKA
Talk to me a little bit about the benefits of having those kind of merged together.

ARRON WINGS
I think it’s a great idea, and I think that’s why a lot of schools are doing it. I think we would be even benefited more if we could get them to connect physically. But I think just from an administrative point of view of collaborating together on getting the software, having a better connection to get the software that we need in the library and having the support to do that, having tutoring in the library work to find spaces or find resources. We’ve had a real good collaboration with Exam Cram between the tutoring and the library. And so there just is that opportunity to … We’re seeing the same students, working on the same things. It’s just a little easier to work together and collaborate.

ALAN PETERKA
You talked a little bit about expectations having changed for students who are coming in, for institutions themselves who are accepting students. How long have you been here at Kirkwood?

ARRON WINGS
17 years.

ALAN PETERKA
In that 17-year experience, I wonder if you could talk about some of those shifting expectations that you’ve seen.

ARRON WINGS
You bet. I think previously our case management for disability students was kind of diffused across the college. We had quite a few people who had other responsibilities, but now we’ve pretty much consolidated that down to two persons. And there was some other shifts that allowed us to do that, but we have it consolidated down to two people who their main focus is to provide accommodation services to 95% of our students. We still do a different thing at our regional centers and the places that geography creates some limitations for us, but within main campus and the Iowa City campus, which is 95% of our students, we have these two people whose job it is and whose focus it is to do that. So I think that has been a real plus.

I think the technology has been a two-edged sword. As things have changed, the technology has gotten better and better at helping provide equal access on the software application side. The other side of that is that as vendors have and the content from book companies has gone more and more electronic, you would think that would be a good thing, because a lot of our struggle 10 years ago was changing print from electronic to create the accessibility. Now that has gotten relatively easy, and now our challenge is to take the materials that they’ve already created electronically and make them accessible to the software that the students are using. That has been a national issue and is being addressed at a couple of levels, but I would say at this point with mixed success.

ALAN PETERKA
I borrowed this book from the library just recently. The book is called College Success for Students with Disabilities by Irene Ingersoll. In it she mentions that the number of students with disabilities has risen tremendously in the last 15 years. I wanted to get your take on that statement and how it is that … Do you see that statement as being kind of a challenge, or do you see it as something we’ve already kind of met the challenge of this rise?

ARRON WINGS
I think we’ve absorbed that rise. I think that was just part of as we were acknowledging disabilities more, as we were providing more services for conditions that individuals have, now they were getting labeled more as that being a disability, a disabling condition. I think there’s two challenges for us as an institution. The first one that I think we’re meeting really well is the student who self-identifies, who requests services and we meet those needs. I think there is another population of students that have a disability that either don’t request services at all or through that process of requesting services, providing documentation, and then actually receiving the service gets lost in there somewhere.

I think one of our next things in the department is going to do more outreach and to be more active in providing that opportunity, where right now we are very good at delivering service, and we’re very good at making students aware of the services as well. We’re at the resource fairs at orientations, and we go to the college nights at high schools in the area. I think we do that good job of publicizing and making folks aware, and I think we do a good job of servicing those students who present and come through our flow, but I think I would like to see us focus additionally on those students that are between there, came to Kirkwood, maybe knew about our services, maybe didn’t think they needed it or didn’t want to know how to get that access. For our department, that’s not just in the accommodation services. I would say that about our tutoring services, too. There are students that can benefit from services that we provide, and I think doing that funneling or getting them easier access to the application point or the delivery point is going to be our focus in the near future.

ALAN PETERKA
Part of the laws that govern colleges, we call them the ADA laws.

ARRON WINGS
Yep.

ALAN PETERKA
Americans with Disabilities Act laws. Part of that law basically states, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but the students are the one who needs to identify themselves as being in need of support.

ARRON WINGS
Part of it is your philosophy or our philosophy of are you running an accommodation services or a disability services department to meet the minimum requirements of the law, or are you operating your services in a way that is going to maximize students’ access to education. Because that’s what our first mission at Kirkwood is, to give students access to the educational experience. I think it behooves us and I think it benefits the college to be more active about those students who maybe on their application say they have a disability, because we ask that question, but never contact us for service. I would envision something like us making an additional contact with them that says, “You told us earlier that you had a disability. You haven’t requested any services. Are there any services that we can provide?” Or just starting there, that yes, they are required to ask, but why not have that prompt or that connect around we are here and you can ask.

ALAN PETERKA
Making sure they know they can ask.

ARRON WINGS
Yeah.

ALAN PETERKA
So you wouldn’t say that the laws are really the change driving this environment. It seems like Kirkwood is really kind of pushing beyond what the laws would actually dictate us to have to do.

ARRON WINGS
Yes. I would say two things.

ALAN PETERKA
Not to put words in your mouth, of course.

ARRON WINGS
Right. I think on the technology side, I think the laws are changing and the expectations are changing that are driving us to do more than we’ve done previously. But as far as what I was just describing as an additional service, yeah, that is just kind of by our own initiative, and the law is not requiring any of that.

ALAN PETERKA
Talk to me a little bit about the tech laws that are changing.

ARRON WINGS
(Laughs) Sure. The experience of persons with disability of technology is really similar to all of ours, that technology is changing all the time. Some changes brings improvement to the user experience; some changes interfere with the user experience. I kind of alluded to this earlier that technology 10, 15 years ago was more or less focused on taking things that lived or were originated in a print world and making them available in an electronic world. The recent change is for those original content creators, the expectation is that you create it accessible in the first place and you do not require persons with disability to go through this additional step to make it accessible for them.

ALAN PETERKA
You talked a little bit about the outreach that you’re planning to do in the future. Are there other challenges that you see or other areas of growth, work that you see as lying ahead in the future, things that you want to get done and accomplish here, either at the institution or even more nationally where we need to go with this conversation?

ARRON WINGS
The biggest challenge is to have it both institutionally and in our broader communities, whether that’s our cities, our counties, our states, or our national government, to just have persons with disabilities be part of the conversation at the beginning. So that if we’re looking to make changes, if we’re looking to change how we do things, that instead of deciding what we want to do and then deciding how that impacts persons with disabilities, that should be part of what we’re looking at in the first place. As persons with disabilities become a larger and more visible part of our population, it just gets a little easier. Globally, that’s our big challenge is to bring them up to the front and have them be a part of what we think about at the beginning rather than at the end of the decision making process.

ALAN PETERKA
I wonder if you have any recommendations for us as we continue to think about accessibility, or just recommendations in general, maybe your favorite place to eat in Cedar Rapids.

ARRON WINGS
(Laughs)

ALAN PETERKA
Recommendations about maybe a movie or a book that you’ve seen that might help us frame this topic a little more?

ARRON WINGS
Actually, Hidden Figures, the movie about the three black … It’s based on a true story. There is also a book. There’s a book, and then the movie is currently playing in a theater near you. It’s a story of three black women who were working in the early days of NASA during the ramp-up to get to the moon and their contribution to the space exploration and actually getting to the moon. The point or kind of the thing that I took away from the movie as I watched it through was these people, these three women went from very marginalized, underestimated roles in the NASA program, and each uniquely found a role that was more fitting with their capacity and their skills, and each of them broke ground in the different area that they were in. As I reflected on how did that happen, I think that what occurred was when the urgency of space exploration and getting to the moon got more powerful than their social norms of what the status and what the role of these women were, that allowed them to become a computer programmer of the first computer that NASA had. That allowed them to be a part of the engineering group that figured out the trajectory of how the rocket needed to get out of the atmosphere and get back into the atmosphere.

I think that’s what we need to kind of do with disabilities, too, is not think of them in our way of that we’ve always seen them this way and we’re comfortable. I think being able to have a different urgency or have a different where we do get to see what their abilities are … One of the small things in the movie was the movie takes place in Virginia at Langley, and of course, they have segregated bathrooms. So when all the African-American women worked in one small room segregated from everywhere else, having a bathroom down the hall from that room worked. When they took one of the women out of that room and moved it all the way across the compound to the engineering group, having her walk a half a mile to get to the bathroom didn’t make sense for getting the work done in her group. So it was the supervisor of the entire thing … The question came up, “Why are you gone 40 minutes a day?” And the answer was, “Because I have to use the bathroom a half a mile away.” The next scene is him taking down the sign to the colored restroom and say, “We don’t have that anymore because we can’t afford it. It’s more important for us to do our work than maintain these social norms.”

ALAN PETERKA
Brilliant. Thanks so much, Arron, for coming to talk and share the different roles that we all play here with accessibility and helping us redefine those social norms.

ARRON WINGS
(Laughs) Thanks very much for having me and the opportunity.

ALAN PETERKA
This has been the Education Is podcast. Thanks for listening. For more episodes visit educationis.us, subscribe on iTunesU or wherever you get your podcasts.