Page 21 - 2022 Feb Report

III. THEMES
Resilience
Disability Convening report (2)
1. Disability must be included in all discussions of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). 2. The relationship between disability and career services needs to be addressed.
3. Students with disabilities must have equal access to career services.
4. There should be more focus on employers.
IV. DISCUSSION
Kris Webb was the first presenter and set a very high bar with her excellent presentation. She reminded us that many, if not most college freshmen do not have a good idea of their career goals and this presents real challenges for them and for those teaching and advising them. She talked about the importance of paid work experience since that is so much more helpful than volunteer
or student teaching. She emphasized the importance of campus wide support for students with disabilities and not just support from disability services. She then described a program that she designed called PACKS – Professional Advice, Career Knowledge, Support. Parts of that program have been implemented at UNF, but she had not finished with the development of the entire plan before she retired. PACKS is a comprehensive and ambitious program, and everyone was positively impressed with it. Discussion followed about whether this was more a career services project than a disability services one and it was agreed that while the primary focus is career, there would have to be a great deal of cooperation between the two.
Meg O’Connell began by discussing how disability and inclusion has been a hot topic for several decades but including disability as one form of diversity lags seriously behind and is a challenge with most businesses. She suggested that one strategy to improve this is to help employers see disability as a competitive advantage. One way in which to measure employee satisfaction and to drive organizational change is through “engagement surveys.” Global Disability Inclusion has been working with Mercer (among the largest HR firms in the world) to learn more about this. They undertook a review of ten years of global data about disability employment engagement. Their findings were not surprising but very telling and important. For virtually all of Mercer’s employee engagement data there are not differences for age, race, gender or sexual orientation. Yet disability has some of the largest differences across all engagement. Interestingly, new hires with and without disabilities are equally enthusiastic at the beginning of their employment but over time differences begin to appear. Among her most important findings was that companies can make a difference if they choose to
take a strong position on disability inclusion. She showed, as an example, how Microsoft was able to show that employment favorability ratings improved a great deal in only three years when programs and offices supporting people with disabilities were put in place. She ended her discussion by saying that Global Disability Inclusion and Mercer will conduct another employment engagement survey in February of 2022 and hope to have the results by this summer.
Tracie Snow talked about the CTE program at FSDB. CTE there helps prepare students for employment when it is known that the playing field is not level. Students in the high school CTE program are told early on that they will need to self advocate and show potential employers that they are skilled and good potential employees. They begin career awareness when the students are in elementary school and there is a continued focus on this throughout the entire school years. There is much focus on self awareness and advocating for oneself. CTE students can obtain industry certification while still in school which gives them a competitive advantage when seeking employment. FSDB arranges for students to take CTE skills and development courses both on
19