Episode 2: Meredith Williams

Image: #2 Meredith Williams. May 20, 2020. #stopthestereotype

Public Health, Universal Design for Learning, and the DREAM organization with Meredith Williams

Episode 2

Click to listen on Apple Podcasts — https://apple.co/3bHvZxK

In this episode, we discuss

Public health, universal design for learning and the DREAM organization with Meredith Williams. What is public health? What things do we need to think about when teaching students with disabilities? How might the way we think about teaching change? What does college look like for a student with disabilities and how might they receive accommodations and mentorship?

Highlights include:

What is Public Health? (2:00)
The relationship between income and psychological distress for people with disabilities (4:20)
Barriers students with disabilities may be facing (8:06)
Rethinking accessibility statement in the syllabus and how you teach and assess materials (14:23)
Universal Design for Learning (15:10)
Gaining a place at the table and how college systematically excludes students with disabilities (20:54)
Assessment vs. Labor-Based Grading and whether the latter is ableist (25:34)
Finding community and representation (28:59)
The founding of DREAM at UWM (32:00)
Advice for students with disabilities entering college for the first time (37:56)

Resources Mentioned

Disability Rights, Education, Activism and Mentoring (DREAM): https://www.dreamcollegedisability.org/
Labor-Based Grading: https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/labor/chapter4.pdf
Universal Design for Learning: http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html#.XsNWgRNKjkJ

About Meredith Williams

Meredith Williams is a PhD student in public health with a passion for promoting disability inclusion and mobilizing public health knowledge, frameworks, and strategies to meet the needs of the disability community. She has a background in patient and disability advocacy, firmly grounded in her own lived experience, and experience consulting, speaking, developing trainings, conducting research, and providing technical assistance.