ResEdChat Ep 68: Understanding & Supporting Disabled Students On Campus with Ali Martin Scoufiled

Paul Brown:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat, our podcast where we talk about topics of interest to Residence Life and Housing professionals at colleges and universities. I’m really pleased to have a very special guest here, someone who actually goes back many years with me. We won’t mention how many, but it’s a double-digit number of years. We have Ali here with us, who I originally knew as just Ali Martin at that time when we worked at Miami University together. But I’ve asked Ali to be on the episode because she’s doing some really interesting research related to disability and disability on campus, and what does that mean for us as professionals to be able to create campus environments where everyone feels welcome . So thanks for joining me, Ali. How are things with you? Where are you? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a little bit of your background.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Hi Paul. Thanks so much for having me, and yes, we do go back a really long time. We don’t have to give the exact number, but it is great to be reunited in this format. My name now is Ali Martin Scoufield, and I am a doctoral student trying to wrap up my PhD this calendar year. I’m working at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m a full-time student, so the work that I’m doing primarily is on my research, but I do get to do some pretty cool things as a GA these days, going back to my GA roots. So I’m working as the program manager for the Center for Refugee and Immigrant success, and then I’m doing some grant writing around refugee and newcomer populations. And then I’m TAing for three classes, trying to get some more teaching experience, so that fills up a lot of my time.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Wow. I know this is an offshoot of our topic today, but I don’t know that I’ve encountered professionals working with, specifically with refugee, I assume immigrant populations, on a campus. I would be remiss if we didn’t dig into that at least a little bit. Can you tell how did that position come about, or what is it that they’re doing there specifically to work with that student population?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Yeah. Absolutely. No. I’m excited to talk about it. I work with two amazing faculty members, Dr. Huang and Dr. Gallagher, and it’s a double interest. We work with experiences that newcomer students have in K-12 and what support resources they’re needing to be successful in order for them to then be successful in colleges and universities. And then we do some work around what they need in colleges and universities too. So it’s my first foray into the K-12 sphere. I’ve always been really higher ed, but right now we’re doing focus groups with three school districts here in Ohio. And we’re meeting with teachers and psychologists, and guidance counselors who work with newcomer students who work with refugee students to see what their experiences are like, what those students are needing to be successful.
We’re also doing some speaking engagements with the students. Actually, this Friday is my first one where we’ll be talking with students and encouraging them to go to college and talking with them about what college is like and that it is for them, and that here are the resources and here what that can look like. So it’s pretty cool. It’s a grant funded work at this time, and so I was just lucky that these two faculty members needed a GA, and I was interested and available.

Paul Brown:
That’s awesome. That’s great. Yeah. That could be, I think a whole episode unto itself, which is not why we got together today, but I just think it’s so fascinating as things evolve and the way that higher ed looks at inclusion, what does that mean? What are the different student experiences that we seek to be better at fulfilling things like that, which actually is a little bit of a nice segue into the actual work that you’re doing in your doctoral program. Very kudos on going full-time. I did the same thing. I have no idea how people do it part-time and actually finish ’cause that would’ve not worked for me, and I give them all the credit in the world for that. But when you started that doctoral journey, tell us a little bit about what your topic is, how you settled on that, where you came to that, what is the motivation behind your research, and what did that crystallize as in terms of your idea?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Yeah. Thanks. I knew that I wanted to look broadly at inclusion, but I also knew in doing a PhD and a dissertation. I couldn’t just be broad in all of the ways I needed to funnel it down a little bit and look at either a specific experience or a phenomenology or an identity, and being a disabled researcher myself and having gone through several universities processes around connecting with office of disabilities and testing services, that really became a pathway that I was really interested in understanding a bit more on the curricular level, and I knew I wanted to look critically at things. That’s not to say that any of the places where I have been a student have done things incorrectly. It’s just that colleges and universities can always change and grow, and do better, and population is changing and evolving, and as there so often is with doctoral research, I found a gap in the research.
I found that there isn’t a lot of research about higher ed disability experiences where it looks specifically at disability, where it centers the voices of disabled students, where it takes this asset framework. There’s a lot more research that I found in the K-12 area, and really does look at different diagnoses and medical models of disability, but I wanted to look really broadly about what disabled students are experiencing in higher education. And so for the PhD aspect, as you know, Paul, it was nice to find this gap because I could squeeze in there and start doing some research that hopefully will be really good.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the term disability can mean a lot of different things. It can be conceptualized a lot of different ways for our listeners in housing and residence life, I feel like disability is often seen through the lens of physical and physical accommodations because housing people run a physical space, but of course, there are also working with a broad array of students whose disabilities may present as physical or through other means or things like that. Can you tell us a little bit about, for folks who may not have delved as deeply into the literature on disability, how is that term defined? What kinds of models help us understand it? ‘Cause I think that can help break people outside the box of maybe taking in their own mental model as to what it means to be disabled or be a disabled person or a person with a disability.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Sure. Absolutely. I think for my research, I’m really looking at self-identity and for individuals who are connected with Office of Disabilities or however that’s phrased at their institution. And typically, in the past, it has meant some sort of diagnosis, so it has really connected to that medical model. Most colleges and universities disability offices require some type of documentation for folks to receive accommodations. That typically means connecting with a doctor, an MD or a psychologist or psychiatrist, and getting some documentation that says, because of this diagnosis, this person would need accommodations, X, Y, and Z that kind of thing. I want to look really broadly at identity as a major focus of my research that yes, a lot of times it may start in this medical model, but it evolves in different ways too, and it’s really as part of identity, it’s part of community.
So that’s really what I’m looking at. So when I’m talking with folks who haven’t delved into some of the reading, it’s really that it’s about self-identity. Sometimes it’s connected to socio-emotional learning. Sometimes it’s connected to physical pieces too. Sometimes it’s connected to mental health and wellness. Sometimes it could be connected to a kind of illness, a traumatic brain injury. There are lots of ways where someone may define themselves as disabled.
And for me, it’s really important to not necessarily look at the medical model because there are so many barriers inherent there. It is really, really tough to get documentation. It is hard to get appointments. It is hard to get testing required for some of these things. It’s really expensive, and a lot of privilege can be associated with that. So I like to think more when I’m talking with students. When you’re in a classroom, what is that experience like for you when you’re doing these assignments, when you’re reading through this, when you’re presenting what goes on? How are you feeling about this? What is your stress and anxiety? What are these words look like on the page? What does it feel like engaging with your peers around this work? Because I think there are… And research supports, there are a lot of undiagnosed disabilities that our students are navigating, and so the identity piece is the important one for me.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. What you’re saying is kind bringing reminding me a little bit of… Previously, I had done a lot of work with queer theory, and I’m drawing parallels in my brain to what you’ve been describing as some of the disability research and theories. Is there a connection there?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
I think so. And what’s been interesting, backtracking just slightly to our earlier conversation around newcomer and refugee populations. I found a lot of parallels in a lot of these theories, and some of the work that I’m doing right now that I’m really trying to dig into is the role white supremacy plays in ableism. So I haven’t gotten into that as much as I would need to talk to it that much, but I think parallels with theory, with experiences of newcomer, and refugees with this idea of students whose voices have often been ignored, silenced, removed with students who are looking to be part of the broader community, but also finding so much love and support in smaller, more insular communities. Who are looking to be successful and have worked really, really hard to get where they are and continue to hit these barriers just as they’re trying to pursue their education. I think there are lots of parallels in a lot of these spaces.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. And I think one of the things I’ve noticed. This is my own personal experience too, is as I’ve aged, not just physically but gotten to know myself better, I think over time, let’s put it that way, I’ve come to appreciate the ways that ability has shown up in my life in different ways. Things that might not be labeled with a capital D disability meaning a medical documentation things like that. There are certainly things that depending on how one’s framing it or what experienced one’s coming through, this could be considered a disability. There’s a range of ability that we have and trying to navigate that and find out, “Hey, okay, I learned how to navigate this.” But what are other spaces doing to help other people navigate those various things, including things that I may hold or not hold.
What do we do to break out of that medical model of really deeply understanding what it means to be able-bodied and who gets the definability and those kinds of things? ‘Cause I think many places that I’ve been, that’s really the dominant discourse on a college campus, and it’s rare to find a place. I think that where it’s pervasive to really think about ability in a more progressive kind of way. How do we break out of that mentality, or would you even agree that we have that mentality, I guess, too? I don’t know. That’s my perception.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Yeah. No. I think we do have that mentality, and I think I have in the past. I love what you talked about, Paul, this growth and progression for all of us. And I think that’s really how we move forward. One thing that came to mind when you were talking was an idea of this asset-based framework that disability really is an asset. The way our brains work, the way our bodies work, what we’re able to do, things that we need to do to manage in different spaces and in different ways. So the first thing that comes to mind is one viewing it as an asset, not viewing disability as a negative or a deficit or as a cause for inspiration or anything like that. I mean, it’s identity, it’s a person, it’s who they’re, and it’s part of their makeup. It’s part of the lens through which we view the world.
I think another piece is to have conversations with disabled folks. I recognize that is maybe the ideal, and also gets really challenging. I mean, some of these disability services offices, like many in higher education are understaffed, and a lot of processes are put in place because there’s simply not time to get to know every single student, even though it needs to be this interactive process. I know it really can feel to our students, they’re being shuffled through and kind of, “Okay, check this box. Move this here. Do this, do this.” But I think the more that we’re talking with students about their experiences and the more we’re understanding really what it is they’re going through on a day-to-day basis to just be a student, something that they are entitled to both legally, and I think for those of us who work in higher education philosophically. I think that’s really helpful.
I also think, and this may be as too broad of a statement, but I’ll say it anyway. I think a lot of colleges and universities are overly focused and worried about disabled students trying to work the system and trying to cheat their way to a degree. Research doesn’t support that, and I think we just need to move beyond that. Accommodations are necessary. Folks without disabilities could use accommodations too. I mean, there are universal design principles that could be applied to support all students, similar to chosen name policies, supporting all identities of students. I think there are universal design policies that support, yes, absolutely disabled students, but support all students who may just be having a bad day or who may have gone through a bad breakup or maybe an RA and they were up all night dealing with something and they just need a little support. So I think we just have to move away from this idea that students are trying to get away with stuff all the time.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. I do find that a lot of things that we do in higher ed are for that one case that happened one time that resulted in this overly designed complex process, which actually can be more harmful to the people that need to access it than the impact of, okay, someone got an accommodation maybe, “they did not need.” But yet we’ve now designed a whole process about it. For those of you watching on video, apparently I have to turn my Apple notifications off because if I make certain hand gestures, that will result in visual cue, but anyways. But I feel like sometimes that becomes the rule. Certainly, it’s faster, it’s easier, it’s quicker. It doesn’t require thought. We can build in those kinds of things, but it can hurt more than it can help broadly speaking.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. And I absolutely did this too in my previous role. I was associate vice president and dean of students. A lot of my work was around risk assessment and student conduct and threat assessments, and things like that. And we absolutely had conversations about these one-off situations, and I was in these conversations saying, “Oh, well. We may need a policy around this or remaining an approach to this, or we may need to make sure this one very obsolete thing never, ever happens again.” Instead of looking more broadly and saying, “Okay. What situations led us here? What was the environment like? What are things we can more broadly look at in order to support our individual students and our community?”
So I try to reassert that need in this work too, that we don’t have to address every individual thing that happens with an exact, I don’t know, remedy or policy or direct action, but we can look more broadly and systemically and say, okay, well what do we need to do to make sure our community is safe, inclusive, students feel like they belong. Students are able to persist all of the good things we want to do.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. In terms of talking with students, I guess I’m wondering either through your previous job, your research lens specifically around the aspect of disability, was there anything that students said, experiences they shared that surprised you or you thought were particularly poignant? Maybe you knew, but they just seemed to highlight in a way that made you go this, this is the thing that we need to be highlighting, putting an exclamation mark on, making sure we’re thinking about. Did any of those kinds of moments come out for you?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. I love talking with students both through this research and just in general, and I feel like I’m always surprised. I don’t know if after 20 years, I should continue to be as surprised as I am all the time, but I am. And some students that I’ve talked with, either through research or working have talked about one, just the labor that goes into them just being a student. So that’s both the labor and getting connected to a disability services office to access the accommodations that they’re legally entitled to, but also just the day-to-day sometimes struggle or management to get to class. We have students with chronic illness. We have students with POTS or with cancer who are literally, and not trying to be verbose when I say this, literally fighting with their health, fighting for their survival in some cases, and they’re still prioritizing being a student. They’re still wanting to push through and work towards their degree.
And I just think that’s incredible and something that we don’t necessarily give a lot of credit to or enough credit to. But in addition just the number of hoops and check boxes and things, we require students to go through a disability services, accommodations, getting your documentation, scheduling an appointment. That appointment typically has some in-person or over Zoom component against that interactive process. Meeting with the disability services specialist often. And then connecting with those other great support offices, so your Residence Life, your parking, your academic spaces, your tutoring, things like that. So they go through all of these hoops, they get all of the things that they need to do, and then they walk into their classes or they situate themselves in their class spaces, and a faculty says, “Well, I disagree. I don’t think you need this. This is not something I do. Go back to your academic advisor. You need to switch out of my class. This is not going to work for me.”
And then they have to start all over. In a lot of instances, faculty do have the right to deny accommodations if they believe it’s a fundamental alteration to their course. So students have to start that all over again. And colleges and universities, typically, not every, but typically, they’re not staffed in a way to give disability advocates for every student, for every student to go back and have this conversation about why they need this accommodation, why they need to be in this class. So just before I ramble too much about this one point, I think the labor that our students are put through is astronomical and something that I wasn’t quite aware of.

Paul Brown:
And let alone if you’re talking about what we consider traditional age, 18 to 24 year old student, they may never have been in the place to have to really do that on their own, that maybe they relied on their parents maybe to do that, or they just haven’t learned to self-advocate in such a way, not that necessarily adults always have that as well, and by adults, I mean older adults. But that’s a high bar for especially if someone’s 18 coming out of high school where I would assume a good chunk of that was probably shouldered by some other folks, family members, things like that, to now be thrown into a university campus where it’s huge, there’s multiple offices. They can shift you back and forth between them without talking. It just requires a different level of self-advocacy.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. I love that point. And when you layer these other experiences and other identities on top of that first-generation college student, an international college student, someone who’s transferring in, because we know that typically at universities, our transfer orientations are a bit different than our new incoming student orientation. So even finding out where to go and what to do. There’s a great researcher, I can’t think of her first name, but Butler, and she wrote a book called I think Gender Trouble, but she also did some work around that I apply to disability, talking about this idea of precarity and this precariousness.
And I think about that a lot when I’m thinking about this work because of the vulnerability that our students so often have to be in. Imagine sitting down with someone you are just meeting for the first time or Zooming in with someone that you’ve just met for the first time, and having to explain really intimate parts of your life and details about what you need in order to be successful to say, well, in order to be successful in class, I need an attendance accommodation or I need to be able to come in late or flexible attendance. I need extensions on assignments. I need the ability to get up and go to the bathroom multiple times during class. I need to have water with me because I can’t get dehydrated. I need to make sure someone is with me who knows how to use X, Y, and Z tools and materials in order to keep me safe.
And to really have to go into detail with someone you’re just meeting about this could be potentially really intimate parts of you, and there’s this level of precarity, this level of curiousness and forced intimacy that goes into this. Again, I am in awe of folks who are pushing through all of these different challenges and barriers, and that’s why I wanted to study this a bit more. I think colleges and universities. I think we can do better.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re speaking, and I had mentioned queer theory before, and what really to me in my brain and the parallel I make is it’s like coming out not necessarily about an LGBT identity, but it’s coming out on a continual basis. That coming out is not something that happens once and then it’s done, but it’s something that happens continuously in different spaces and occurs in different ways, and to have to be in the position to constantly come out in order to get the things that you need to be successful sounds even more exhausting to me in some ways because it forces that, which I could understand why students then may say, “Maybe I won’t come out about it in this space. I’ll just suffer through whatever I need to do or just not speak up ’cause that feels easier to me or less work to me in the moment than having to do that.”

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. I love that parallel too, and I think to your point, we do have a lot of students who maybe had accommodations at their previous institution or had IEPs, 504s, and K-12 who come to college and say, “You know what? I’m not going to do this again. I’m going to do it on my own. I don’t need it. I’m fine. I know how to manage. I know how to take care of myself.” And sometimes that goes really well, and other times not so well. And under disability accommodations, we’re not able to do retroactive accommodations. So someone may find themselves failing bit by midterms, and they were entitled to accommodations, but to your point, they didn’t want to go through that process again of sharing all of these pieces about themselves in order to just get an accommodation.
So I think that would be an interesting next step of my research if I could connect with students who maybe had IEPs, 504s, and K-12 and opted not to connect at a college or university and just kind of find out why, and would there be ways that we could better support those students too. One of the biggest barriers that I found in my research is that, and this may be as a duh kind of thing to say, but students only get accommodations once they’re registered or connected with the disability services office. So all of these thousands of students who either don’t have the documentation, don’t know how to navigate the process, don’t have the parental or other support that they had before to help them do that, or simply just don’t want to, they’re not getting the accommodations that they need to be successful.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. As we reach towards the end here a little bit, I just want to get into some practical implications. So our listeners are primarily in Residence Life and Student Housing. What are some of the things that, from your experience, from your lens, that housing and Residence Life could do better about or could focus on more that maybe you haven’t traditionally seen departments like that focus on or ways that they can be better at working with disabled students?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. First, I love Res Life. I love our Res Life folks-

Paul Brown:
Yeah. That’s our background. That’s how we started, right?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
That is, that’s right. So 11 years, I think full-time, Res Life experience, and just really value the work that folks do in these spaces. And I think there are likely places that are doing this really, really well. But I think overall, again, I would emphasize the importance of talking with a student when you find out that they have some accommodation or need, and you typically get that information from a disability services office. Sometimes students may start in Res Life. I think you all do get documentation sometimes submitted directly to you, but a lot of times the approval process comes through a disability service office. I really encourage us to talk with these students.
I mentioned to a faculty member just a few weeks ago that throughout my higher education career, bachelor’s degree, two master’s degree, and now trying to wrap up this Ph.D. but I’ve only ever had two faculty members talk with me about my disability. Say, “Hey, I got this accommodation notice. Can we chat and make sure I understand what you need in this class and how this works?” Two faculty members out of four, almost four degrees.
And so I would say that’s probably likely in other spaces. So I think in Residence Life spaces, talking with students, remembering that disability is an aspect of identity, it’s not shameful. It’s not anything to be embarrassed about and really say, “Hey, this is what I got from the disability service office. Does this work for you? Let’s talk about what this means here in these different spaces.” Every person with a disability is different and has different needs. So they could have something assigned to them from a disability service office and say, “Yeah. This works really great for me. This other piece I don’t really need, so we don’t need to do that, but this would be really helpful for me.”
So just having that conversation, I think it’s really helpful. And then earlier, Paul, what we were talking about making those plans around the one-offs and the extreme situations. I would just urge caution in that with Res Life spaces. I know there are a lot of conversations around service animals and emotional support animals and therapy animals, and things like that. I just encourage us to be inclusive in our mindset and thoughtful in universal design principles and really think about when people are wanting these animals with them, what that means. I’ve worked at places where staff from dining halls have called and said, “Well, there’s this person here with this dog.” I’m like, “Well, of course, it’s their service animal, of course.” They’re like, “Well, we don’t allow dogs here.” Well, let’s think broadly about this and about why and how. And I just encourage us to really do that whenever we can in these spaces too.
And then certainly, if anyone’s doing renovations or new builds, to be really thoughtful and intentional about that. Disability is more than just physical attributes, but a lot of times it has that too. And so to just be purposeful around those designs and to, I know I’ve said this so many times, it’s maybe becoming some drinking game or something. But universal design really applies in so many spaces here to think about the universal user. If any type of person, any individual needs to use this space or this service or this classroom, or this learning style, how would they use it? And I think applying that in Res Life is really critical as we move forward and more and more disabled students are coming to college. Research supports that more and more are coming to college.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. The conversation piece that you mentioned mirrors what I think has been at least a positive development in Residence Life. I have a long history with residential curriculum, curricular approaches, things like that happening in Residence Life. And one of the main things, I think that’s schools that have gone down that path, particularly in Residence Life, it tries to privilege the student connection over the checkbox mentality of the program, right? Under older models, RA develops program it’s supposed to apply to every single student universally in some way across that floor, which how could it ever, right? And a lot of schools have moved towards intentional conversations, intentional interactions where RA is meant to on a regular basis, develop a relationship with that student.
Now, I think the main goal for me always through that would be to have the types of conversations that you mentioned, or at least open up the space so that if a student wants to have that conversation that they can, and I think that mirrors our understanding of more individualized attention. We still have programs. They’re there, but we can refer students to them. They can be there if they need to self-select into them. But what’s really needed is more of that individual guidance and understanding the individual person in that, which I hope that some of our Res Life models take that into account when they’re designing those experiences. I don’t know.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Absolutely. I love that. And I’ve been a big fan of your work around residential curriculum, Paul. And I echo that residential curriculum is not my expertise, but students are looking for community and connection. They absolutely are. And disabled students are also looking for community and connection and are sometimes excluded by nature of their disability or self exclude. And so, I think I echo everything you said. I think the individualized relationships, the in community building, the ways of bringing people out of their rooms and their spaces and gathering together in different ways. Even in remote spaces too, but I think those connections are just critical.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ali for joining us today. Always good to see your face, and always brings a smile to me. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you’re like, “Ah, gosh. I want to make sure that I leave folks with this thought.” Or anything you think came up out of your research so far that you’re like, here’s a nugget for you to take with you?

Ali Martin Scoufield:
Well, I don’t know if this is a nugget, but I’m a big nerd and I love reading, so I’ll leave maybe with a book recommendation-

Paul Brown:
Oh, that’s great.

Ali Martin Scoufield:
… Emily Ladau has a book, Demystifying Disability, and it is fantastic. It’s not too long. It’s a really great primer. She does some really good work around defining disability and talking about as she herself is a disabled woman, what the world can do to be more welcoming and inclusive, and has lots of applicability for education spaces and higher ed and Res Life, and things like that. And I’ve used her work in a few classes that I’ve taught and specifically talking about language and how ableism can really be insidious and be in a lot of even just our conversations. So just wanted to recommend that book, Demystifying Disability. It’s a really great one for folks looking for some more light reading.

Paul Brown:
Awesome. We’ll make sure to include that reference link to that if we have one in the show notes for this episode. So if you do want to check that out, just check on the show notes. But thank you so much, Ali, I appreciate it. And that concludes this episode of ResEdChat. If you have ideas or for topics or folks that you’d like to see on the show, just please let us know. Have a great rest of your day.