PPD: FASED: Shaping Vocational Frontiers: Science, Engineering, and Mathematics for Persons with Disabilities in Rural and Remote Areas

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Improving education and inclusion of students with disabilities in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) through camps, science fairs and other programs are imperative to the diversification of our future SMET work force. Students with disabilities in remote and rural regions are much less likely to have access to SMET resources because of their geographic location. Additionally, students with disabilities and their families are often strapped financially due to excessive costs in transportation, adaptive technologies, support personnel, personal care, and architectural adaptations. After families pay for these essentials, SMET camps and programs often are a financial burden. As one step in our project, we plan to collaborate with existing SMET camps and programs, to demonstrate that all camps can be appropriate for students with disabilities. This would enable students in rural and remote regions such as Alaska to participate fully in science and math education experiences leading to careers in SMET. The Shaping Vocational Frontiers Project will be directed by Drs. Radtke and Owens with assistance from Access Alaska. Dr. Radtke is a well known scientist and community activist and Dr. Owens is an experienced researcher and teacher, outdoor educator and inventor. Both men have severe disabilities and are intimately familiar with the problems faced by persons with disabilities in SMET related activities. Access Alaska will be instrumental in training, camp accessibility, and network development. The project will create a program that involves a core of students, families, scientists, educators, and university-level science teacher trainers. This amalgam will strive to enhance the opportunities for acquiring SMET education for students with disabilities throughout Alaska. As a group we will work towards this goal through changes in science education curriculum, educational practices, and policy in the state. We plan to identify students with disabilities across the state who can benefit from this program and provide them with hands-on, field-based science. We will emphasize activities that provide for integration of students with disabilities with their traditional counterparts who do not have disabilities. Role models and mentors, many with disabilities themselves, will advise, problem solve, and guide both individual students and heterogeneous teams of students (consisting of both able-bodied and students with disabilities) in these activities. The appropriate assistive technology will be used in concert with Internet to insure that students with disabilities will be fully included in SMET activities, Electronic technology (including the Internet) will be used to encourage networking and information dissemination among student teams, educational organizations, administrators, and members of the community. The project will be carefully documented for public television and Internet venues. All publications produced by the project will be available through fully accessible electronic media.