Advancing disability equity in academic workplaces: a professional development seminar case study

Although about a quarter of working age adults in the United States identify as disabled, representative numbers are not found in most workplaces, including academic and scientific workplaces. In higher education, disability-focused policies, programming, professional development, as well as research, have been predominantly oriented toward disabled learners. This by-default attention to the needs of disabled students implicitly signals that disabled faculty and staff are not expected to be present, and/or are not welcomed and valued employees. In this evaluative case study, we detailed a year-long professional development seminar investigating experiences of academic faculty who identify as disabled and reviewed findings from a post-seminar survey. Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative survey data indicated that participants in the seminar series made meaningful gains in four fundamental aspects of allyship focused on disability (in)equities in academic workplaces: increased general topical knowledge of disability stereotyping and discrimination, improved understanding of discriminatory impacts of ableism, enhanced skills for interrupting disability discrimination and inequities, and amplified personal commitment and motivation for addressing disability equity in the workplace.