UD@UA Summit – Invitation to Participate
The University of Arizona Disability Resource Center (DRC) and the Office of Diversity and Inclusive Excellence (ODIEX) invite you to participate in our first annual UD@UA Summit on April 10th from 8am-4pm at Environment and Natural Resources 2 featuring a keynote address by Jay Dolmage, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo and author of the book, "Academic Ableism."
This year, DRC's Universal Design and Outreach branch has been working on campus to promote the principles of universal design to groups such as the strategic plan initiative owners, faculty fellows and their respective site hosts, the Appointed Professionals Advisory Council, and more. Now, it’s your turn. The summit will be a space for UA professionals to gather, reflect on our practices, policies, and spaces, and to propose bold solutions to common campus barriers.
What is the UD@UA Summit? The format of the summit is like when a "hack-a-thon" meets an "unconference." That is, we are interested in engaging staff, faculty and graduate students in a day of reflection on campus design to collectively work toward and advocate for a more proactive, equitable and inclusive campus. Specifically, we will engage participants in considering commonly experienced barriers against the Principles of Universal Design, which broadly refers to the design of products, environments, and experiences to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation.
What will we talk about? That depends on who shows up. The UD@UA planning committee has created a skeleton schedule that follows a process inspired by design-thinking. During the opening morning session and following our keynote presentation from Jay Dolmage, attendees will define a list of barriers to engagement across campus, and then spend the day considering universal design principles in breakout and designing changes that could systematically remove these barriers. Everyone will participate in identifying campus barriers and discuss, dissect, and ideate on new and more inclusive practices and policies to promote campus-wide.
Who should come? We are looking to attract professionals from across the University, including career- and tenure-track faculty, staff and graduate students.
Why should I get involved? We are all designers! It's our responsibility to create equitable and inclusive environments that will benefit our students, our colleagues, and even ourselves. We hope that this summit will also generate momentum for a new, inter-professional UA Universal Design Working Group who will continue conversations started at the summit toward developing even more guidelines that encourage new practices and policies across campus that are inspired by UD principles.
Interested in attending and being involved in this process? Go to bit.ly/UDUASummit2019.
Want more information? Go to drc.arizona.edu.
Questions or concerns? Email our campus' Universal Design Consultant Cole Eskridge at peskridge@email.arizona.edu.
We hope you will be able to join us!