Welcome to Episode 142 of the Think UDL podcast: Empathetic Design with Jimena Vergara Sanz. Jimena is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. A teaching and learning college of mine introduced me to Jimena’s work, so I’d like to thank Derek Eggers in our Center for Teaching and Learning for Student Success for this fantastic connection. In today’s episode, we discuss empathetic design, human-centered design, adaptive design versus universal design, and of course, universal design for learning. I learned so much from the exercises Professor Jimena Vergara Sanz has introduced to her students and so have her students and also, so has she as we will discuss. We talk about her interesting journey as a professor in a foreign context, that is being an international professor teaching in the United States, and also how having a physical disability informs her teaching practice. And we end with hope. So much hope! And how we need empathy in the world and how empathetic design makes the world so much better–not just in education, but in politics, the medical and medical insurance field, and just everywhere. I am so excited to bring this conversation to you and if you want to learn more you can find Jimena’s contact information along with the articles mentioned in today’s episode on the ThinkUDL.org website resources just before the transcript for this episode.

 Welcome to Episode 141 of the Think UDL podcast: Strategies to Support Neurodivergent Learners with Jennifer Pusateri. Dr. Jennifer Pusateri is a Senior Universal Design Consultant at the University of Kentucky, as well as a talented author, speaker and educational consultant with whom I love to work and with whom I have worked often! I was so excited to participate in a workshop of hers entitled “10+ UDL-Aligned Strategies for Supporting Neurodivergent students” at a recent conference and I knew I needed to bring this to my Think UDL listeners. In today’s episode we discuss neurodiversity, terminology, and multiple strategies to support neurodivergent students in areas such as focus, attention, and motivation, organization and structure, unspoken expectations, time management, emotional and sensory regulation. And what we talk about today isn’t everything in this power-packed workshop, so if you want to learn more you can find Jen’s contact information on the ThinkUDL.org website resources for this episode.

Welcome to episode 140 of the Think UDL Podcast: Professional Development Programming with Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Heather Touet, Tasha Maddison, and Myra Zubot Mitchell. 

All three of my guests today work at Saskatchewan Polytechnic which is located on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory and has campuses in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina. Tasha Maddison is an Educational Developer in the ILDC (Instructional and Leadership Development Center). Myra Zubot Mitchell is a Learning Technology Trainer with the Learning Technologies Department and, like Tasha, is in the Learning and Teaching Division. Heather Touet (pronounced “Tway”) is an Instructor with Learning Services in the Student Services Division. In today’s conversation, we discuss the programs that these fabulous multi-disciplinary folks are offering including a UDL Institute which is a yearly event in March, and the intersection of UDL, Artificial Intelligence and accessibility, and a really fun idea they have implemented called UDL mini-challenges. In addition, we discuss how UDL and indigenizing the curriculum are related at their institution among other ideas.

Welcome to Ep 139 of the think UDL podcast: Emotional Capacity and Intercultural Competence with Tara Harvey. Dr. Tara Harvey is the Founder and Chief Intercultural Educator of True North Intercultural. She assists educational institutions in reaching their internationalization goals through consulting, training, and coaching and helps educators develop their capabilities to incorporate intercultural learning into their work with students. I took a course from Tara several years ago and have found so many connections between intercultural learning and UDL over the years. In today’s conversation we discuss the recently updated UDL 3.0 guidelines released in the summer of 2024 and pay particular attention to the section on emotional capacity. Quite a few changes took place in that section of the guidelines and I thought that a discussion about them through the lens of intercultural competence may help listeners to understand what those changes really mean. Even if you are not familiar with the old or new guidelines, this conversation is helpful for anyone –and not just in higher ed. It is helpful in teaching and learning, but it is also very helpful in life in general to think about how we act in the world and how different we may be from each other.

Welcome to Ep 138: Neuroinclusive Advising with Rachel Adams and Fred Zinn. Rachel Adams is Associate Director of Education and Training, Disability Services at UMAss Amherst and a Doctoral Candidate, UMass Higher Education and Administration. She offers education and training around disability and also teaches undergraduate students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Fred Zinn is Associate Director, Digital Learning in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and focuses his practice on teaching teachers how to teach and teaching with technology as well as educating others about accessibility. In today’s conversation, Rachel, Fred, and I discuss how faculty and staff in the role of an advisor can support undergraduate and graduate students, both formally and informally. We discuss best advising practices specifically with a neuro inclusive lens. You’ll hear my new favorite term in today’s conversation “unconditional positive regard” in relation to supporting neurodivergent students, but it seems appropriate to me to use in many other situations. I hope you enjoy this thoughtful conversation on the Think UDL podcast.

Welcome to Episode 137 of the Think UDL podcast: Deconstructing "College Material" with Cate Weir. Cate Weir is the Program Director for Think College for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. She has written and managed grants to create programs for students with intellectual disabilities to attend college and continues to work with, improve and grow these programs nationwide. In today’s conversation, we talk about the history of and need for college programs for students with intellectual disabilities, what the benefits are to the students enrolled in these programs as well as the benefits to professors who teach and the general enrollment students who take classes in which students with intellectual disabilities are co-enrolled. Throughout the conversation we deconstruct what “college material” has been and how it has changed over the years and we end with thoughts on how instructors, students and universities can design environments where all students, including those with intellectual disabilities, are included.

Welcome to Episode 136 of the Think UDL podcast: Centering Disability with Katie Grennell. Dr. Katie Grennell completed her PhD in American Studies from the University at Buffalo in 2016. Her dissertation, entitled The Making of the ‘Fame Monster’: Disability Aesthetics, Bodily Deviance and Celebrity Culture delved into the distinctions between deviance and normativity by analyzing representations of disability, bodily difference, and deviance in American popular music and popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st century. She has worked as an adjunct in the disciplines of history, American Studies, American popular music, and disability studies for 17 years at multiple institutions throughout Western New York. She currently works as an Accessibility Strategist at Anthology, supporting institutions using Ally. Her first book, Disability and Accessibility in the Music Classroom: An Instructor’s Guide (Routledge) was published September 1, 2022. In this conversation, I ask her about UDL in performance-based classrooms and how disability access has shaped her teaching. In addition, we discuss what disability culture teaches all of us and what her vision is for the future of inclusive education. 

Welcome to Episode 135 of the Think UDL podcast: Nothing Without Us with Amy Lomellini. Dr. Amy Lomellini is the Product Accessibility Lead at Anthology. She leverages her personal and professional experiences to help bring clarity, consistency, and confidence to the accessibility of Anthology’s array of educational technology products and solutions. She has experience as an instructional designer and an associate director of online learning. She teaches related courses and chairs several accessibility committees, including Anthology’s Accessibility Workstream. She holds a doctorate in educational technology and her research and publications focus on accessible and inclusive online course design strategies. In today’s episode, Amy and I talk about her experience as an online learner, educator and as an advocate for accessible and inclusive education. We discuss how disability culture has impacted and might shape online education and visions for the future of online education.

A side note, I was able to record this interview in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in September of 2024 which devastated Western North Carolina where I live. I did not have power, water or internet access at my home podcast studio, but was able to go somewhere that did. If the audio quality is not up to the same standard as previous episodes, it is because I was not using my usual podcasting equipment. However, having this conversation was an immediate balm to my soul and helped mend a bit of a broken heart over the recent destruction all around me. I hope you find it as hopeful and mending as I did.

Welcome to Episode 134 of the Think UDL podcast: Ask Me and Believe Me with Mickey Rowe. Mickey Rowe is an award winning best selling author and speaker. As an autistic and legally blind person, he believes that when we design for accessibility, we help others to perform at their best, and, as he says, that’s not just for disabled folks. He is a Broadway actor, director, consultant and public speaker and was the first autistic actor to play Christopher Boone, the lead role in the Tony Award-winning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He is a disability and accessibility advocate and his most recent speaking engagement is with TextHelp’s open access conference Back to School Blockbuster: Lights, Camera, Educate! on September 18-19, from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST. This is a free virtual conference designed just for educators. If you are listening to this episode after the synchronous online conference, all of the content is available on demand until the end of November and you can find a link to the Back to School Blockbuster conference on the ThinkUDL.org webpage under the resources section of this episode, and in the episode description. In today’s conversation with Mickey, we talk about his experiences as a disabled student at the university level and what he and his professors did to manage the barriers that persisted while he completed his undergraduate degree. Mickey gives us all, students, instructors, administrators, and everyone else, some sound advice on how to reduce the friction but not the rigor of a college education. There are some easy choices and forward thinking designs that can help all of us along the way. I was able to catch Mickey at 6:30am his time in Seattle, Washington, and by the end of our interview his young school-aged children had joined us in the recording and made a brief appearance. You’ll hear them, too!

Welcome to Episode 133 of the Think UDL podcast: Online Graduate Education with Tracy Balduzzi. Tracy Balduzzi is the Associate Director of Strategic initiatives for the graduate school at Syracuse University and an adjunct Lecturer at Utica University in upstate New York. Tracy recently wrote an article about how she has implemented UDL strategies in the graduate online course she teaches and I was able to catch up with her to talk about what interventions she used to increase engagement, and added multiple ways to assess students along with providing multiple options for representation. We will also talk about student feedback and where to go from here!