Join Us!

Learn from graduate students, faculty, and staff on their experiences navigating graduate school with disabilities.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

WebEx (Virtual – link will be emailed after registration)

For more details and to register for the event, click here.

Captioning and ASL interpreters will be provided at the event. If there are other access elements we can help with, please contact: cinnamon.adams@uconn.edu

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More Information

The Graduate School recently polled UConn graduate students who identified as having a disability. The results of the poll revealed several things. First, many of our grad students do not “disclose” their disability to anyone at the university, including CSD (the Center for Students with Disabilities), for a variety of reasons. Even among those students who do receive accommodations through CSD, many do not disclose to their advisers, supervisors, or colleagues due to fears of stigma and othering. This tells us that there is a need at UConn to initiate a broader conversation that addresses the unique needs and experiences of graduate students with disabilities. 

Another thing we heard is a desire for community. For many disabled grad students, our only exposure to disability is through CSD, which, while absolutely crucial for our success, is by its very nature focused on disability as a problem to be solved or overcome. For many of us, our disability is much more than that; it is a central part of our identity and our lived experience. We hope to develop, over the coming years, a community where disabled members of the UConn community can joyfully connect with one another in a way that is not clinical or remedial. 

To this end, a group of UConn graduate students, faculty, and staff are organizing an event in spring 2022 to begin a conversation about navigating graduate school with a disability, and we hope it is the first event of many. We invite the graduate education community to join us in a virtual panel event in February. The panelists will be graduate students and graduate faculty who will share their experiences of navigating academia with a disability. We have also invited University staff from CSD and Human Resources who are familiar with the accommodations process for grad students and grad assistants to share information and answer questions. 

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