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Submission guidelines
Talk will cover disability and access in university spaces
A message from the Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo (FAUW)
While we should all be familiar with processes of accommodation for disabled students, we need to expand our conversation to consider employees as well. If they haven’t done so already, all faculty and staff are likely to ask for a disability accommodation at some point in their career. Further, many staff and faculty will become administrators or leaders who will work with such an accommodation request.
Disability studies professor Margaret Price of The Ohio State University will be visiting Waterloo to add to ongoing conversations about disability, access, and accommodation at Waterloo and at universities in general. Price is the author of the award-winning Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life.
In a public talk on February 13, “Moving Together: Toward a Theory of Crip Spacetime” (3:00 pm in Renison 2106), Price will outline what she calls a "crisis of precarity” in disability studies (DS), a state in which the wealth, privilege, and power of a select few are replicated, doing material violence to some members of the discipline, while the discipline itself continues to flourish. In short, what does it mean to work within a discipline like disability studies, when the rights of people with disabilities continue to be imperiled and endangered? In response to this crisis, Price offers a different way of thinking about disability, a theory of crip spacetime.
Price’s findings from interviews with disabled faculty illustrate ways that precarity manifests for disabled faculty, but also ways that, through collective accountability, we can push back against neoliberal logics. Through smaller acts of resistance as well as efforts toward structural change, we can work toward greater justice, not only for disabled individuals, but also within the discipline of DS itself. Although her analysis was based on faculty members, she draws attention to information and strategies that are applicable to all members of the University community.
Interested faculty and staff can follow up this lecture with a workshop the next morning. “Creating a Culture of Access for Mental Disability in University Space” (February 14, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in DC1301) will explore concrete strategies for making university spaces more accessible for employees with mental disabilities. The overall aim of the workshop is to offer specific tactics for creating a "culture of access," as it has been described by Elizabeth Brewer, Cynthia Selfe, and Melanie Yergeau, in university space.
CART (Communication Access Realtime Transcription) services will be provided for the February 13 lecture. Registration for both events can be found at uwaterloo.ca/fauw/events.
Save the Date: International Women's Day Dinner
On International Women’s Day, the University of Waterloo celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women at our University, in our community, and around the world.
Join us on Friday, March 3 for a special evening of celebration during our 60th anniversary. The evening will begin at Federation Hall at 5:30 p.m. with a sit-down dinner, remarks from host Feridun Hamdullahpur, President and Vice-Chancellor, and keynote speaker Naila Keleta-Mae, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts.
International Women’s Day dinner tickets will go on sale Thursday, February 2. Individual tickets are $45, and table purchases (8 seats) are $350. For more information, please contact Community Relations and Events.
Register now for the next Research Talks event
Interested in learning about research advances in detecting and resolving software errors? Join Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Joanne Atlee for the next session of Research Talks at noon on Friday, January 27.
Joanne will examine how software modelling and automated analysis techniques can detect hard-to-find errors in software, as well as how problems can be resolved on the fly at run time.
There are a few spots remaining for this event, please register to reserve yours.
New guidelines could reduce heart failure complications in long-term care facilities
Communication lapses during shift changes, limited staff training, and inadequate specialist support can lead to misdiagnosis and complications in long-term care (LTC) residents with heart failure, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo and the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging.
The study published in the Canadian Journal on Aging, outlines 17 new recommendations that optimize care practices for heart failure in LTC, with the goal of improving resident quality of life and preventing emergency room visits.
“Identifying the barriers to optimal heart failure care in LTC is the first step towards improving care practices,” said Dr. George Heckman, Schlegel Research Chair in Geriatric Medicine and an associate professor in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. “At the forefront of these concerns is limited clinical knowledge around how to identify, document, discuss and treat at-risk patients.”
The findings are the result of a three-phase consultation process and expert panel that included front-line LTC staff, residents and family caregivers, and specialized physicians, nurses and pharmacists.
“Front-line staff want, and more importantly need, a better understanding of basic physiology and clinical skills specific to older and frail individuals with heart failure,” said Dr. Heckman. “Communication barriers between personal support workers, registered nursing staff and physicians interfere with information sharing that would otherwise lead to a more definitive and timely diagnosis and treatment.”
Currently, heart failure affects up to 20 per cent of residents in LTC homes. The study’s recommendations range from improving shift-change communication protocols to advance care planning and are designed for front-line caregivers, physicians, specialists and system-level professionals and administrators.
“These new guidelines are a very practical way of ensuring that patients in LTC receive the best possible care when it comes to heart failure,” said Dr. Heckman. “As the population ages, they will only become more critical.”
Heart failure is a leading cause of death in older adults. It affects over 26 million individuals annually.