A Conversation with Autumn Wilke about Disability in Higher Education

Transcript

Marshall Poe:

Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello everybody, This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network and you're listening to an episode in the Grinnell College Authors and Artist Podcast. Today, I'm very pleased to say we have Autumn Wilke on the show and we'll be discussing her book, Disability and Higher Education: A Social Justice Approach, and we'll be discussing disability in general at places like Grinnell, because it's kind of a new thing. And we'll get into that in the course of the interview. Autumn, welcome to the show.

Autumn Wilke:

Thank you so much, Marshall. I'm happy to be here.

Marshall Poe:

My pleasure. Could you begin the interview by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, absolutely. So as Marshall said, I'm Autumn Wilke. My pronouns are she/her/hers. And I am currently the associate chief diversity officer for Disability Resources at Grinnell College. And I'm also a doctoral candidate at Colorado State University where I am studying disability in higher education. And I have worked at Grinnell College for the past 11 years, mostly within the realm of disability resources. And so, not only have a lot to talk about related to the book, but also this is my day to day work. And so, very excited to be here talking about this.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, and that's a great segue to my question. I graduated from Grinnell in 1984 and we had student affairs deans. I think we did. Grinnell is so small, that I don't think I ever knew a person who was a dean. They probably were a dean, but I didn't know about that because it's a very intimate place. What is the historical origin of your role? My impression is it's pretty new?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah. And my current role is very new. So bringing everything under the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, really has happened just within the last couple of years with the inclusion of a new Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Schvalla Rivera, at the college. But the Office of Disability Resources at Grinnell College as a standalone office is very new. Our office was created in 2014, 2015. I believe, I was hired as the first coordinator of disability resources in October 2014, if I remember my timeline correctly. But I had been working at Grinnell prior to that as a residence life coordinator. And a quarter of my time was in academic advising doing work for accommodations for students with disabilities at Grinnell. And so, it had been happening as a part of the work of the Office of Academic Advising and Student Affairs, but there had not been a dedicated office prior to 2014.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I do remember that. I think it was called the Office of Student Service or something. I don't remember the word accommodation being mentioned at all in my time at Grinnell. I really don't.

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, that's entirely possible. And I think that's actually a trend or a theme across higher education in the United States. Even though the ADA has been around since the 1990s, it's really only been in the last decade or so, that many colleges have really begun to think about having a specific office for supporting students with disabilities around access and accommodation. And it's been even more recent that institutions have really been shifting very similar to what Grinnell is doing, to thinking about not just accommodation and access, but also identity and really exploring the social emotional needs of students with disabilities in terms of navigating that as part of their identity and their overall experience at college.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit, and maybe again, I don't want to put you on the spot. Can you talk a little bit about the legal framework here? Because I know, because I've run this business, the New Books Network, that there are laws about accommodation. Can you talk a little bit about the legal context for this?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, I can definitely do that. So in higher education, and this is a shift for students when they first come to college, because there are different laws that govern the K through 12 system. Under the K through 12 system, students are protected under the IDEA or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Which is where you get your IEP individual education plan and your Section 504 Plan. And those really provide a much more expansive support system in cases. Particularly, at K12 schools that are well resourced, because the focus of those laws, their success based laws. So the goal of the IDEA, is to get students to graduation. Regardless, of what that looks like or how that pathway takes, but in the least restrictive way.

When you transition to college, it shifts from a success based framework to an access based framework, which can be a really big transition for students and their families because it means that the ways that students have to advocate for themselves, shifts pretty drastically at the point when they enter college. And what it means is that students have to self-identify. They have to identify themselves to the institution or to our office and say, "I'm a student with a disability, Here are the things that I am needing in terms of accommodations." And many students don't yet have the skills or the knowledge about, "What does this look like. What do I need in higher education in terms of residence halls, in terms of dining, in terms of academics?" And so, a lot of the work that we end up doing is within that framework of the law, what we need to do under the ADA, what we need to do under section 504.

But there's a lot more that goes into it in the way that Grinnell approaches. And I think many institutions follow a similar model, although Grinnell is certainly, we have much more staffing for an institution of our size than many other institutions. But really helping students think about or navigate, "What does it mean to really figure out what I need in particular environments? How do I ask for that? How do I really understand how my disability interfaces with different spaces and environments," in a way that really helps students be ready to leave Grinnell by the time they've hit graduation. And be ready to advocate at the next institution that may not have as much in terms of support or be able to really think about entering the workforce and employment in terms of accommodations as well.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's very interesting. I'm familiar with the K through 12. I have three kids, and as I said in the pre-interview, my middle daughter is deaf in one ear. So I know about IEPs and we brought that to the attention of the school. But in college, the onus is on the college student. They have to be able to assess themselves. How do they do that? I mean, here's an example. This is just right out of my own biography. I had dyslexia. Nobody knew I had dyslexia. I'm old. Nobody knew what that was. I didn't learn to read until third grade. I became a successful reader, I can say that. But it takes me a lot longer to read stuff. There's no question I have dyslexia. It's just a fact. I've found ways to deal with it. And in interesting ways it's been a kind of advantage because when I read, I read really carefully. So, how does a student identify if they have an issue that would fall into the rubric of these laws?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah. And that's a really complex question in some ways because it really does depend. And I would say that our K12 system and our healthcare system, are not set up in ways for students to have equitable access to the diagnostic sort of resources being identified in their K12 system. And so, we end up working with students of across the range of experiences. We have students who arrive at Grinnell with a stack of paperwork from their previous institution, from medical providers that really deeply details, "Here's how this student is impacted." Sometimes the students don't know all of that information. Their parents have really been heavily involved and the student themselves may not be able to describe. And so, there's still some sort individual learning that happens for students.

But then we also have students who... Grinnell students are incredibly bright and have found all sorts of ways to navigate and cope with any number of learning environments in their K12. And so, we'll have students who arrive at Grinnell and it's the first time that the pace is moving fast enough or there is so much reading or whatever it might be. That it's really the first time that the students are encountering a difficulty related to their disability. Those things have been there before taking dyslexia or things like that, we've had students who very clearly should have been identified by their K12 system at some point. And were missed be likely because they were still getting A's. They were doing really well. They were self accommodating by being able to retain a ton of auditory information by really being able-

Marshall Poe:

That's what I did. I learned to listen really carefully.

Autumn Wilke:

Yep. And that works. And it's a skillset and it works really well until it doesn't. And then, when you get to a place like Grinnell and you have four classes, four or five classes sometimes, and all of them have hundreds of pages of reading every week, that's where it starts to break down. And so, sometimes we'll have students who come in and say, "I don't know what's going on. Reading has always been a struggle for me, but here I can't keep up. What are my options?" And so, then we'll work with students every year. I would say we have somewhere between five and 10 students that we work with who actually end up getting tested for learning disability or ADD, ADHD-

Marshall Poe:

And you can do that? You have the staff to actually test them. That's excellent.

Autumn Wilke:

So, we don't do the testing in-house, but we have a relationship with a provider that we send them to and we can help cover for students who are low income. We can help cover the cost of testing.

Marshall Poe:

What are the most... I don't know. I guess, we still speak about accommodations. So, what are the most typical accommodations that you see? Or is that a statistically meaningless question?

Autumn Wilke:

It's not statistically meaningless. I would say that most common accommodations that we see right now, there's two. One of them is on the academic side. I would say it's stuff related to testing. So extended time or reduced distraction. Really making some sort of allowance for the environment of, "You have 50 minutes to put as much information as you can down on this piece of paper."

Marshall Poe:

Dump.

Autumn Wilke:

Dump, yep. And so, having accommodations in some way related to exams is by far our biggest accommodation on the academic side. And then on the residential side, we've been seeing a lot of students who, for a big variety of reasons are needing a single living space for themselves. Whether that be related to anxiety, a chronic health condition, currently under COVID, and things like that. But having a single in the residence halls before... So any junior or senior can have a single at Grinnell. But for first and second years, they would need an accommodation to be able to do that.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like I'm talking too much about myself, but I both hated timed tests because what I discovered was, is that if I was given enough time I could do anything. But I couldn't do it as fast as all the people in my class.

Autumn Wilke:

And it's so rare, that time actually is what matters-

Marshall Poe:

Well, I can tell you that. I was going to say the same thing. Now, I've had variety of careers and time has never been important in any of them.

Autumn Wilke:

And even for the tests, the time is arbitrary because that's how long the class was scheduled for in those spaces.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's exactly right. And then the second thing about a single, is that my freshman year I got in with a group of people who are lovely and I'm still in touch with them. I really am. But I found that... Well, let's just say it was difficult negotiating living with my friends. And so Grinnell gave me a single, actually in the second semester because it was just a little too much for me. And once I had a single, I did a lot better. So I can certainly understand both of those accommodations being reasonably common. Are there tools available for students who are going to college to learn about these things? Because I've got to imagine a lot of them just don't know. If they're from an under resourced K12 district, they don't know. They think they might have a problem. Is there a place they can go to learn about this stuff?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, so there are several places where students can go. I think one of the challenges is that if you don't know what you're looking for. If you don't know that there's a problem or you don't know what that problem is, you don't know what words to even search or how to go look. But I will say that there are a number of, and a growing number of nonprofit organizations that are collecting information on the web for students who are getting ready to go to college around particular sorts of disabilities or particular learning challenges. I'm trying to think of some of them. It's escaping me now.

Marshall Poe:

I don't mean to put you on the spot. We can put them in the show notes, if you send me an email.

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, I'll send you an email because there's a handful in particular that are really collecting a lot of that information. And would be a great starting place for students to be able to say, "Oh, this sounds like what I'm experiencing. Here's things that I should explore or here's questions I should ask."

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Let's shift a little bit to, I want to call it old school accommodations or accessibility. I lived in Norris when I was a freshman. Norris has no elevator.

Autumn Wilke:

It will after this summer.

Marshall Poe:

Really? I always wondered about that. The other thing is I used to live in the Soviet Union and I remember once I lived in this big building and there was this two track that went up the stairs and I thought, isn't that nice? They have a two track for people in wheelchairs, but then I noticed it was at about 45 degrees and it was obviously for prams.

Autumn Wilke:

Yep.

Marshall Poe:

So, what are colleges doing now, in terms of just physical mobility? I have to imagine there's just been tremendous... I know every time that they put in a new sidewalk here where I live, it always has a ramp. There must be some law about that, because they do it every time.

Autumn Wilke:

So, that's actually built into, it's part of the ADA, but it's really in our building codes now. That there's a whole host of accessibility features that need to be in any new construction or substantial renovation. And the definition of what constitutes a substantial renovation gets debated a lot. But Grinnell is really approaching it as, "Anytime we renovate, we bring it up to the latest in terms of accessibility." And so, Norris is actually a great example as one of the larger residence halls on campus, it has four stories, narrow halls. A number of different features that make it challenging.

But in its current iteration, it does feel very confining. It's very narrow, it's a very cement building. But it's being substantially renovated this summer, both it's due for its standard renovation that the college does of residence halls and to bring it up in terms of accessibility. So, they're adding an elevator and a new sort of lobby area that is on all four floors. Helping kind of bring more open space to the building at the same time, they're adding those accessibility features, expanding the bathrooms. Really thinking about that collective experience for students being able to visit friends on any floor regardless of if they have a temporary mobility impairment from tearing an ACL or anything that our athletes sometimes are want to do.

Marshall Poe:

I had those. I played basketball. I had those.

Autumn Wilke:

Yep. And so, I'm actually really excited. We did Younker several years ago as well. And added an elevator and expanded the bathrooms and that was a really substantial renovation that has been really great in terms of opening up even more spaces on campus that students can visit or have programs. And Norris is the next. We're also working on additional renovations to residence halls sort of over the next 10 years, that'll really start to change that landscape.

Marshall Poe:

I lived on West Norris Fourth and I loved it there. I thought it was great. But then I learned later that it was the worst draw you can get. I don't think it's bad anymore.

Autumn Wilke:

It has air conditioning, you know with global warming.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, we didn't have air conditioning. No.

Autumn Wilke:

All about the air conditioning.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, we didn't have. Well, one of the things you said interested me, is about these physical accommodations for mobility issues and that is the issue of trade offs. And it seems to me that so much of your work and so much of our thinking about disability has to do with these trade offs. Because I've renovated buildings myself or houses and making them accessible is expensive. So, I guess this is of silly question. Are there federal or state grants to give Grinnell money to... How is this stuff funded when the builder says, "Look, this is going to cost you a fortune and there's just no way you want to do this."

Autumn Wilke:

And this is one of the reasons I love working at Grinnell. We are lucky that we have a large endowment, but we're also lucky... Lucky is maybe not the right word because it's been intentional. But really I would say that my work is made easier because Grinnell as a collective, really is very invested in these accessibility changes. And so, when we're planning for it, accessibility is a whole chunk of the budget that is built into any renovation. And so, it's planned for when we're raising money for when we're doing a capital project like we did for Younker, the cost or the estimated cost of those accessibility of features, adding the elevator, expanding bathrooms, things like that. All of that, gets built into the planning and the fundraising for the construction. But you raise a point. Cost is something that I would say prevents a lot of institutions and a lot of places, from either following the law or doing renovations in the first place, because they don't have the capacity or they don't want to take on the capacity of adding some of these features.

Marshall Poe:

Right. You would think there would be some sort of bucket of state or federal or local money to do these things when from the point of view of the proprietor, it's just cost prohibitive. I don't know anything about that. I bet that there is, if you looked into it.

Autumn Wilke:

There's probably some funding. I'm not aware of any substantial buckets of money that across the board exist for things. I know revitalization grants sometimes can have money built in that's related to accessibility. So, if a downtown gets a revitalization grant from the state, or things like that. But one of the challenges, and this is kind of getting back to that legal question you asked, one of the challenges of all of these laws is that there is no sort of enforcement mechanism until somebody makes a complaint. And so, it really relies on or puts the expenditure of energy, the onus on people with disabilities to not only have tackled, "I couldn't get into this space I wanted to go to, or I didn't have access to this thing." Then they also have to go through the process of saying it with the government, "Here. I want to file a complaint, blah, blah." All of those steps. And there isn't really no mechanism where this is being sort of systematically checked.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. I mean, I know that my local area, there're building codes and buildings over a certain size have to be accessible. There's no question about it. I mean, I've renovated individual homes, they don't have to be accessible. But we've done what we can. This may seem like an odd question, but how do you deal with service animals? I was a grocery store the other day and there was a guy with a service animal in there. What is the law around those and how do you deal with those things?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, so service animals, and I could talk about animals on campus for hours probably, because there're multiple types of animals that can provide support related to disability. Service animals being one category. And so, service animals for folks who are listening and maybe are not as familiar, are going to be animals that are individually trained to specifically do a task that alleviates one component or addresses one component of a disability for somebody. And so, what people often think about would be guide dogs, guide dogs for the blind. But there are also a number of other types of service dogs. There are a number of alert dogs. Dogs that can sense seizures coming on, diabetic shock-

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, I know about this. This is incredible. The olfactory abilities of dogs are mind boggling.

Autumn Wilke:

The things dogs can do. There's also dogs that will do retrieval tasks, bring medication, any number of things. And so, service dogs are actually protected as, I often use the analogy that they're actually closer to or should be thought of almost like medical equipment. Just like you wouldn't take away a wheelchair from somebody or things like that. It's the same sort of idea. And so, they're not an accommodation. Service animals are actually an access tool. Which I think a lot of folks don't realize. And a lot of that has been getting complicated, I think in of national discourse with the addition of emotional support animals, which are and can be an accommodation in particular, environment source fears.

And we've been seeing both. This year, I think we had five across faculty staff, and students. We had five service animals, service dogs on campus this year. And in a whole variety of spaces. And so, it's not uncommon to see a working dog on campus, which meant that we did a lot of education with the campus at large, to really talk about what's the proper etiquette. How do you not distract these dogs as they're doing an incredibly important job? Especially, I always say this. College students are starved for babies, pets, any sort of the stuff that they don't get in the residence hall. And so, really kind of helping train out the, "Oh my gosh, doggy," response that people have.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's right. Never pet somebody's service dog.

Autumn Wilke:

Yep.

Marshall Poe:

That dog's working. Thank you very much.

Autumn Wilke:

Yep.

Marshall Poe:

Can we talk a little bit about the assistive and learning technologies? Because I think that since I was in college, which was when the dinosaurs walked the earth, that there weren't any. But now I think there are.

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah. And there's a ton of, and I would say that this is a really fast changing area. Technology in general, is really fast changing, but there's a number of things. And even I would say in the last five years there's been a shift where things that before would've been really cost prohibitive or expensive for somebody, and could only happen related to an accommodation. Screen readers, speech to text, that sort of thing, are now becoming things where it's being built into a lot of programs. So your PC, your Mac, have screen readers built into them now. There's free and non-proprietary software that does a lot of these things.

And so, more and more people are using assistive technology, things that were originally designed to assist somebody with a disability, for a whole wide range of things. And so, I think a great example is with speech to text or text to speech, screen reader type thing. I know a lot of our athletes on campus actually use that for when they're riding on the bus. Being able to listen to their readings instead of trying to get nauseous reading from a textbook or things like that. But some of the most common, I would say, assistive technologies that are getting used on campus right now would be things like Otter AI, which does an auto transcript. We have students who use that, either to augment hearing in the classroom, especially in this age with masks.

We have students who will actually have Otter running so that they can double check, "Did I hear that correctly?" And that's separate from CART or live captioning. But for just standard conversations, students have been using some of those AI, sort of tools. We also have students who use a variety of assistive technologies related to speaking math or things like that. That's been a new area where up until recently, for folks who had dyscalculia or learning disabilities that impacted math, there weren't a whole lot of options for assistive technologies that can help with the typing or making sure that things were in a particular order or reading back math because of how complex some of those symbols are.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, that's cool. That's very cool. Yes, I know that for dyslexia, there are particular technologies. I know that if I make my screen a different color, it helps. I think the Apple corporation taught me this. Thank you Apple Corporation. I don't know if this falls under your brief, but I know that a lot of college students have... I don't know if they're momentary, but they have crises. I can identify a couple of points in my four year college career, when I was really not feeling too well. I don't think there was anything permanently wrong, but it was situational or whatever it was. How do you deal with those?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah. So I would say that that's a place where at least at Grinnell, really we have a sort of network of folks who help support. Sometimes that will come to us in disability resources. Often, we have our colleagues in Academic Advising, in Student Health and Wellness, and then in Student Success, who all also can help depending on what that sort of momentary or short term crisis is. And so, to give a couple of examples. Let's say a student has a health emergency, whether that be mental health or somebody has kidney stones or things like that. We as a collective have a system in place to help support that student for short term absences from the college in terms of while they're getting the healthcare support that they need, figuring out how do you then catch up when you get back. A number of things like that.

And most often, that'll be handled by my colleagues in Academic Advising. But if there are ongoing things that come out of that, sometimes students while they're in acute treatment for something, might get diagnosed with a chronic health condition or things like that. And so, then we'll have maybe ongoing supports that come out of our office. I think a really concrete example of that is concussions. We've seen, and I think colleges across the country, as we've learned more about concussions, we see more concussions on campus and respond to them. And so, if a student has a concussion, often those are going to be students where our offices will work together. The student might use some short term assistive technology to be able to listen to their readings instead of using the computer or things like that. But some students will have concussion symptoms that last well beyond a week. And oftentimes, those are then students who will continue to work with us, in terms of accommodated testing or other sorts of accommodations that they might need in their academics.

Marshall Poe:

I think this is a very positive development because I know when I was in college, again, this was a long time ago. The idea of withdrawing, there was a great stigma against it. You did not want to do that. Not only because your parents or your didn't want to miss your friends, or whatever it was, but you didn't want to take any time off. So, you were going to gut through it, whatever it was. And I did it several times, where it probably would've been good for me to take a couple of weeks off. Just chill out or something. But I'm hoping that the stigma against withdrawal, even temporary withdrawal is less than it was. And there are resources available for people, because I mean, you're 18 to 20, whatever you are. This is a volatile time in people's lives and they're thrown into this new context. And I don't know, it shocked the crap out of me. So, there were things that I had trouble dealing with. Grinnell was very helpful to me in every possible way, but I didn't ever think of withdrawing. It just never occurred to me.

Autumn Wilke:

And I would say that that pressure and that stigma still exists. It's something that I still navigate with students where sometimes the best thing is to take some time off from school. And I think oftentimes, the familial or the peer pressure of, "What will it look like to take a semester off?" Either not come at all for that semester or withdraw part way through or even drop classes, I think sometimes can be a really difficult challenge for students. And just as you were saying, 18 to 22 is a really volatile time. You're in a new environment.

It's also the time when a lot of new health conditions, where you're right in the age where things might appear. Whether those be mental health or physical health. And so, we have students every year who receive a new diagnosis of something that it takes an adjustment or actually takes some really substantial care that just isn't necessarily available in rural Iowa. And so, we have students every year that we help navigate what will it look like to either take some time away, what would it look like if we can keep you here and if that's what you really want, can we reduce your classes? Can we figure out a trajectory to get you to graduation? That also gives you room to breathe in this moment. And really kind of thinking through those things.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, back when I was a professor, one of the things I learned that it's often very good. I mean, again, I'm not a professional here, but I would often advise students to take a semester off who are struggling and say, "Just go do something else for a while. I'm sure you can do that. Come back and you'll be stronger." And I really believed this. I mean, I went straight through in four years. I don't know if that was the best thing to do.

I might have benefited from a year doing something else. And it's not a race. It is not a race. I mean, I'm 60 now and believe me, I don't think that I lost any time or gained any time by gutting it through. So, I think it can be very healthy for people to take time off school. And Grinnell will always welcome you back cause you have a permanent relationship with the college. And we had adult students when I was there, people that had departed, let's put it that way, when they were younger. And then came back in their thirties to finish. And that's great. I love those people.

Autumn Wilke:

They have a ton to share.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, right. They have things to say, which your average 18 to 22 year old does not have. So, I always really appreciate them. What about accommodations for faculty members? Is that dealt under the same brief or in the same bucket as students? Or is there a special division for faculty members?

Autumn Wilke:

So at Grinnell, faculty and staff, I work with around accommodations as well. Not every institution has that, where it's all the same office that is doing the support. Oftentimes, faculty and staff accommodations are going to live within HR or be tacked onto somebody sort of positioned somewhere. And so, the supports for our employees, are governed under slightly different parts of the ADA and employment law. And so, there are some differences there in terms of reasonable accommodations for employment. But a lot of the same principles apply in terms of, "What's the barrier? How do we try to remove that barrier so that you are able to do the essential parts of your job that you were hired to do? The teaching, the mentoring," whatever it might be. "How do we make that possible?" So, that definitely still falls under my purview.

Marshall Poe:

I'm just interested, this is kind of a new thing, as I've said, at least it's new to me. Is there a scholarly society or organization or maybe an administrative organization for people that have roles like yours? Is there a convention they can go to? Because that always helps. I was a Russian historian and I could go to the Slavic Studies Conference, where I'd meet other people that did what I did.

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah. So, there's actually a couple of different ones for the different areas of our work. So, for folks who are specifically working with students, the Association of Higher Education and Disability also called AHEAD, is probably the main sort of organization that provides networking, support, education, and has an annual convention for really being able to talk about best practices and changes in the field. There's also some smaller conferences that are more HR tailored for folks who are being ADA compliance folks within employment. It's not necessarily a convention or a conference or things like that, but I often refer to the Job Accommodation Network, which is askjan.org.

And that as a resource, particularly around employment and supports for employees, that's where I refer folks to. I encourage people to take a look there, because often they're going to be able to find things that are really helpful for them in navigating the specific components of their job, the ways that their disability might intersect with those components. And then, it's also a place where I go to keep up on. I think COVID's a great example. What are some of the things about how to accommodate people who are immunocompromised during COVID? That was a place that really provided a lot of guidance.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Well thank you for that. I encourage everybody to go seek out those resources, who's interested in these things, because they probably just have an enormous library of stuff. And also, the other thing is they probably have an email list too, and that's probably the most valuable part of it. Because people trade information on these email lists that I find very useful. Well, thanks so much for talking with us today. We have a kind of traditional final question on the New Books Network. And that is, what's on your mind now? What are you working on now? What are you excited about?

Autumn Wilke:

Yeah, kind of something that is tied into the book that we were talking about today, and all of the different components of it. So, I actually with the original book was brought in after it had originally been conceptualized as one of the authors. Most of the writing had not been done, but they had not yet... At that point-

Marshall Poe:

It sounds like you got hoodwinked.

Autumn Wilke:

But at that point the project already existed. It was sort of the brain child of Nancy Evans, who was my mentor in grad school. And this book really brought me into a writing group really, of folks that I'm continuing to work with. We have been keeping notes about what a second edition of the book could look like because the legal chapter, chapter three was probably out of date, the minute it was printed or the minute it was sent to print. So Nancy Evans, Ellen Broido, and Kirsten Brown and I, we meet weekly, related to a variety of projects that we're working on right now.

A couple of the things that we've been working on have been research projects that will lead to papers as opposed to a book around how students with disabilities define success in college. Really kind of pushing back against more institutional metrics, GPA, graduation, and really trying to find out what is important to students with disabilities while they're in school. And for a lot of them, it's being healthy, it's finding friends. Really kind of thinking about what does success actually look like. And then I'm part of another group and we're really looking at professionals in higher education and how they navigate disclosure. So, how staff and faculty navigate disclosing disability within a variety of environments. And then obviously I'm working on my dissertation, which-

Marshall Poe:

There is that.

Autumn Wilke:

There is that. And with that, looking to explore and expand these ideas around visibility of disability. So apparent, nonapparent often talked about as a binary. Often, disability is thought about as either your disability is very visible and always visible or it's invisible and always invisible. And there's really a spectrum to that in terms of how people recognize various assistive technologies or aspects of disability, whether it gets read as disability or not. And so, really looking to further complicate this idea that a disability is binary. Disability either is visible or invisible, and coming up with a much better way to think about apparentness of disability, particularly in educational settings.

Marshall Poe:

And in my own case, again, I'm talking too much about myself, I don't know if to call them disabilities, but the challenges I have, mental and physical, just seem to come and go. Sometimes I'm just great, but then other times I'm like, "I'm not great." And I appreciated what you said about different goals for people in college. I mean, I know that my mother's college experience was entirely different than mine. She dropped out of college and then had us and then went back to college to a big state institution and she was all about getting credits. That's all she talked about was credits. That was her because she was raising us and had a job and she was like, "Credits. I'm accumulating credits."

Autumn Wilke:

Yep. Credits and learning. Yep.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah, right. "I need credits." Well, Autumn, thank you very much for talking with us today.

Autumn Wilke:

Not a problem. Thank you so much for having me.

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