Goucher Disability Initiative

The Disability Initiative promotes disability awareness through programming, including bringing wheelchairs to campus, hosting disability panels for classes, and providing disability sports and programs. The goal of the initiative is to prepare Goucher students to be comfortable living and working with people with disabilities.

Wheelchair Use

More than 120 Goucher students (and their faculty instructors) used wheelchairs for a full class day. Students traveled from class to class, balanced their lunches on cafeteria trays on their laps, worked off campus, and experienced other everyday activities while using wheelchairs. Faculty members had different goals for each class. For example, an English professor evaluated her students on how well they wrote about their disability experiences.

Disability Panels

Students will engage with panels of people with disabilities. For example, one panel included the executive director of an independent living center, who is blind, and the manager of a program to help people with disabilities find work. The manager has muscular dystrophy. They spoke to education classes about their own experiences and about the services that their organizations offer.

Adapted Recreation and Sports

Three teams of students rotated in and out of a game with the Maryland Ravens Wheelchair Basketball Team. Students also participated in Goucher's first Adapted Sports Day, as well as the annual Loop Road Wheelchair Race.

For more information, contact Ed Duggan, Disability Initiative coordinator, at eduggan@goucher.edu.