Trueba returns to advocate for accessibility

After a year as director of Student Accessibility Services at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., Cathy Trueba recently returned to Madison to become director of the McBurney Disability Resource Center.

Before leaving Madison in 2005, she worked as a McBurney accommodations specialist for 18 years. After relocating from 905 University Ave., the center is adjusting to its new home in the former Middleton Library building, 1305 Linden Drive.

Trueba recently sat down with John Lucas of Wisconsin Week to discuss issues of accessibility at UW–Madison. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Wisconsin Week: Was it hard to uproot from New Hampshire?

Cathy Trueba: It was. It was a beautiful area and a very different experience to go from a large public to a small private [campus], and try to get a feel for the campus culture there and—the similarities and overlaps and traditions. Certainly the thing that both campuses had to offer — that keep me connected to the work in the first place — are really neat students.

WW: Does your experience there color some of your goals here?

CT: I think so. When I look at McBurney, we spend a lot of time on the student-faculty relationship. It’s important for faculty to have education and awareness around disabilities and accommodation and equity and fairness.

But I don’t think we spend enough time on student-student issues. [As a disabled student] how do you connect with other students? What is disclosure [of a disability], what is disclosure to a classmate, a person that you’re about to do a research project with? We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what it feels like for a student to say, “I have a learning disability. I have lupus. I have Crohn’s disease. I have a health condition and that’s why I need X.”

WW: Could you describe the number of students the center is serving right now?

CT: We’re just under 1,000 students. Our largest group is, and has always been, students with learning disorders. We’ve broadened that distinction beyond a traditional learning disability to any kind of condition that is going to affect learning. So we’ve put ADD and ADHD under that category. Certainly students who have had head injuries or strokes fit into that category. But we also have students who have health conditions that affect learning (such as) students who have had cancer-radiation therapy that might affect cognition. We’ve had students whose medication for chronic pain might affect memory. Combined, that’s probably 550 students.

The next two groups that are growing — and have been for some time — are students with psychiatric or psychological disorders, which include depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress.

We have also seen an increase in students with health conditions. Students who, 10 years ago, might have been too sick to really have gone as far in high school as they would need to go to be admitted to a campus like Madison are finding that treatment is much better, and [they] are coming to campus with complex health disorders that are reasonably well managed.

More and more students are coming to campus with hearing loss. We have always had students who use interpreters. We also have a growing group of students, though, who are hard of hearing, who might use captioning services or some kind of amplification in their classrooms.

As we become more and more technologically driven, and include activities like podcasts in classroom learning, we need to be thinking about how that type of learning can be made accessible to students with a hearing loss.

Visual impairment, mobility impairments — traditional or “stereotypical” disabilities — we have and will continue to enroll students with these disabilities.

WW: That’s probably something most people don’t realize. They probably think of more traditional disabilities.

CT: Blind, deaf, wheelchair user — that’s the stereotype. Although we have those students, they’re the smallest percentage. The largest percentage is students with “hidden disabilities” — students you won’t necessarily know have a disability unless they tell you.

WW: For a student with a psychiatric issue, how would they work with you?

CT: It’s pretty individually determined. Take a student with an anxiety disorder: They may benefit from having more time on an exam to manage the anxiety. A student with depression might benefit from having a note-taker in the class — not for those classes that they’re attending, but for when depression is overwhelming and they can’t get to class.

In some ways, what we’re saying is that we’ll support you while you’re taking care of yourself; we don’t want this to turn into a drop or a withdrawal. How can we help you get back to class?

We do a lot of advocacy — students spend a lot of time trying to pass for being healthy, which is pretty exhausting. At some point during a 15-week semester, their internal capacities are a bit overwhelmed. We may talk about whether it’s appropriate for [the student] to have an extension on a paper through the weekend. Those are individually determined and negotiated with faculty. We encourage students to have the conversation with faculty at the beginning of the semester. We try to help students learn to be good advocates around preventative or reparative strategies before events happen.

WW: Are faculty usually flexible?

CT: I think faculty really want to figure out the fair thing to do. Some things can’t be flexed, and that’s why if we talk about it ahead of time, we can figure out a solution. We try to encourage the idea that accommodation is like a three-legged stool that includes the student, the faculty and our office. If a student is making a request for something uncharacteristic or a little different than the traditional more time on exam or a note-taker, we want faculty to feel like they can consult with us.

We try to position ourselves as advocates for reasonable accommodation.

WW: What kinds of things does this campus do well in relation to its peers?

CT: I think Madison has developed a pretty good model that says that issues of access don’t all belong to the McBurney Center. From facilities to technology to social activities, everyone has a part to play in making the campus accessible. In the higher levels of the administration, I think there are open doors and a willingness to understand what we are trying to accomplish as well as what our obligations are to students with disabilities. I think we do a particularly good job in getting out and working with teaching assistants.

This campus has a pretty strong reputation nationally, and we’ve actually won several different awards for the quality of service we provide. The campus has set up systems that parents have confidence in. There’s good feedback out among our students. We ask students, “Would you refer a friend to our office?” By and large the answer is “yes.” If they would send a friend to us, they must be comfortable with what we’re doing. I think, and I hope, that we have a reputation for integrity and that people on both sides of the conversation can trust us to be thoughtful and stay on top of what’s current in the field.