Thanks to a series of new grants awarded to the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, people with disabilities will soon have access to improvements in educational outcomes at the post-secondary education level, leadership training, and research on health promotion that is more sensitive to their needs than in the past.

Enhancing Higher Education Opportunities for All, a three-year $1 million grant from the Department of Education, is designed to improve the quality of outcomes for students with disabilities at Temple University in particular and in higher education in general. The new grant will help researchers determine if educating Temple University’s students about the contributions of people with disabilities will improve the educational experience for all students and disabled students in particular.

This multi-tiered project will use the "Mosaic Humanities Seminar I and II" courses, currently offered through the university’s General Education core curriculum, to discuss the contributions of people with disabilities when talking about diversity, said David Mitchell, executive director of the Institute on Disabilities and associate professor in the College of Education. Temple professors with expertise in disability studies such as Jeremy Schipper (Religious Studies), Josh Lukin (English), Mike Dorn (ELPS), Diane Bryen, (CITE), Ann Keefer (IOD) and Carol Marfisi (IOD), will provide instruction on the history, culture, arts, and social experiences of people with disabilities. Ultimately, the grant seeks to understand how best to integrate these contributions into current teaching on diversity.

The grant also includes the development of a more expansive training module on disability to all new faculty and staff through Temple’s Human Resources Department. During the required orientation, the researchers will infuse information on accessibility and Universal Design for Learning in teaching and staff support venues to help all students get the most from their academic experience.

Mitchell sites several questions he and his colleagues hope the program will answer.

“If the diversity curriculum includes people with disabilities, will it change student perception of people with disabilities,” Mitchell asked. “If students with disabilities are in these courses and these topics are addressed, will their own experiences as disabled people be tapped as part of their contribution to the course? We’re going to follow the sections of students to whom we teach this curriculum to see if it has an impact on their experiences at Temple.”

“Once the study is complete, the program will be offered to colleges across the country as part of a replication project to infuse disability studies into other university curricula on diversity,” Mitchell said.

Another grant awarded to the institute from the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Council will help people with developmental and other types of disabilities take their rightful place among the next generation of leaders.

In partnership with the Pennsylvania Youth Leadership Network, The Center for Independent Living of Central Pennsylvania, the Urban League of Philadelphia and Leadership Harrisburg, the Institute on Disabilities will use this $400,000 grant to connect experienced leaders with those aspiring to pick up the torch.

Community building, leadership and diversity, individual leadership development, sharpening team building efforts and governance strategies will be among the skills that participants will collect as part of the curriculum of this grant, said Celia Feinstein, associate director of training and technical assistance for the Institute on Disabilities. Participants will also get the chance to do an internship related to his or her chosen area of interest, Feinstein said.

Thanks to this grant, young people with disabilities in Pennsylvania will be able to live up to their full leadership capabilities, Feinstein said.

“This grant will enable young adults with developmental disabilities to learn from established leaders and from national experts across the country,” she said. “It is an incredible opportunity, and given its track record in developing leadership among people with developmental disabilities and families, the Institute on Disabilities is uniquely qualified to implement this exciting project.”

The first year of training for the grant will be in Philadelphia and the second in Harrisburg, Feinstein said. Participants traveling from more than 40 miles away for the training may receive travel reimbursement, meals and hotel accommodations, she said.


A third new grant, of $120,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will help the institute explore ways to develop, implement and evaluate a research partnership between United Cerebral Palsy of Central PA (UCP) and Temple University. The goal of this collaboration is to assure that a group of community members are trained to be “research mentors” to the larger UCP community, and that Temple University’s academic researchers are fully informed about community views about the benefits of, and barriers to, health care research.

“Through this award, community members will become full-fledged partners in the research enterprise to improve health promotion for persons with developmental disabilities,” said principal investigator Mary Sega. A series of discussions between Temple researchers and the mentor group of community members will explore the best ways to do this. An application for NIH funding to improve health promotion will be developed during the project’s second year with full participation by the community mentors, after a conference to arrive at consensus on an appropriate health promotion topic for the grant application. The conference will be open to all stakeholders at UCP-Central PA.