An Interview with Callie Rouse: Adam Miller Staff and Faculty Award

Lily Wu (CGIS Peer Advisor): Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Callie! Can you start with introducing yourself?

Callie Rouse: My name is Callie Rouse and I am a Senior Study Abroad Advisor at CGIS. I’ve been working at CGIS for 7 years now; this is my third role in the unit. I work with a portfolio of study abroad programs, particularly in the STEM fields, as well as serving as the unit lead on pre-departure orientation, peer advisor supervision, and liaising with the disability office.

LW: Why is disability access in international education important to you?

CR: Disability access is important to me, in part, based on my own personal experience with disability. As a disabled person myself, I think it's something that always stays with you. I had an unfortunate situation when I was in middle and high school; I had accommodations to be at the front of the class, because if I am too far away from what I'm looking at, my eyes start shaking, and I can't see. I had consistent issues with my teachers and the administration dismissing this need. I would have to constantly self-advocate to be like, hey, you can't put me in the back of the class again, I can't see.

Similar to a lot of other people with disabilities, I had to learn to self-advocate from a young age, and I think that's influenced me to this day to be somebody who can support students so they don't have to do that level of self-advocacy. It can be really tiring and frustrating. When I interviewed with CGIS, they asked me about access barriers in international education, and I mentioned that disability is a big one. There are many factors that we can’t always control, but making sure that students have a clear pathway to get accommodations abroad is the very least that we can do.

LW: Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I think that can add a lot to people's understanding of what this award means to you. What initiatives have you led for disability access at CGIS?

CR: The initial thing that I did was create a disability accommodations form, basically a guide, for CGIS. I did that back when I started at CGIS as a Health and Safety Assistant. I actually brought that to an International Education Network meeting—they liked it and wanted to implement it as a university-wide accommodations form, and so they made an adjusted form that would be suitable for all offices around campus. Then, we were able to establish learning content in M-Compass that was about disability, so that every student who applied to a program would see, hey, this is how you get accommodations. We tried to attach the information right from the get-go, so students would see what the process looked like.

I did another project where I connected our partners and providers around the world to all the people that we worked with at CGIS, from universities to the alphabet soup of providers. I reached out to them and asked, what are your accommodations like? What can you accommodate? Do you have funding support? Do you have dedicated offices around disability? I'm hoping to repeat this initiative with updated information for nowadays, so that we can have that in our back pocket when a student is like, hey, I want to go to this place, who do I contact?

Additionally, I have presented to the international education community, both on campus and at external events, about disability and how we can better improve access. For example, how we can make our offices more welcoming, invisible versus visible disability, and why students may not disclose their disability. Lack of disclosure about disability before arrival abroad is a huge and important topic that we talk about. I also discuss focusing the conversation on the accommodation, rather than the diagnosis. When I talk to students, I tell them, I don't care what your diagnosis is. You don't have to tell me, that is not my business. I just want to know what you need so you can go abroad.

Furthermore, I also established the disability liaison as a role in our office. I am the liaison with SSD, the Services for Students with Disabilities office. I did encourage other offices to do the same, so that any time a disability question comes in, you have a dedicated person who knows how to answer those questions. We have an established accommodations email, so that people can email us if they want accommodations to come and attend our orientations and events.

Finally, I also facilitated a mental health abroad alumni panel, twice. We had students who had a variety of diagnosed and non-diagnosed challenges with their mental health abroad speak to interested students.

In general, I am trying to continue to educate myself, my coworkers, and peers about neurodiversity in the office and making an environment that is friendly toward neurodiverse and disabled people. I always get really excited when I run into other disabled people in study abroad, because I don't know how prevalent it is and how many of us openly chat about that. That's something that's also important to me, just having a cultural conversation around it.

Lily Wu (CGIS Peer Advisor): Thank you for the thorough overview of accessibility initiatives you’d led! So, you mentioned an accommodations form that students can fill out. What are the next steps in that process?

Callie Rouse (Senior Study Abroad Advisor): Yeah, and that's a good thing to clarify. Since we created the form, the accommodation system has developed to a point where we don't need that anymore. What students actually need is just their accommodation letter. I believe the service that they use is called Accommodate, and that's where their letter lives. There are two aspects of this, academic accommodations versus housing accommodations.

I'll talk about academics first. They are pretty straightforward. If the student has an established accommodation through SSD, all they have to do is contact them for their accommodation letter, and the student brings it to us. I make sure they can figure out who the disability contact would be at the partner institution abroad. We connect the student to that resource. [Note: This process differs for faculty led programs. Students can use the internal Accommodate system to send their disability letters to their faculty as if they were taking the course on campus.]

If they do not have accommodations, but they want to get accommodations—maybe they feel like the system here was accommodating enough but that they would need accommodations abroad—they would just start the process with SSD.

With housing, we work with a different office on campus. I want to shout out Rachel Reuter, who is our Risk Mitigation Manager. She's really done the work, when it comes to the housing accommodations side. Students will fill out a form, and then they get their physician to complete it. So, say they have a physical disability and need to have their own room. They get that noted down and submit it to our office; then it gets reviewed by UHS, the University Health Service, who are the professionals who ultimately make the determination that this is a fitting accommodation. Then we send that form over to the partner institution. Students often have to do a parallel process with the partner, where they also have to show that they need the accommodation there, but we'll work with them and the partner.

The biggest thing I can ever emphasize with both of these processes is starting as early as possible. It's going to be really hard if a student is providing us with this accommodation form really late in the game, because it can be more challenging for us to figure out, for example, if the partner can accommodate a single room in a particular housing unit, or if they have the facility set up so that they can provide particular accommodations. So, speaking with us early is really helpful, and I'm always really happy to talk students through what that process looks like for them individually.

LW: Awesome. I know you’ve talked about the importance of cultural norms around disability access. You work with many international providers from all around the world, where I imagine that norms around how to talk about disability access differ a lot. Has it been a meaningful experience to navigate such cultural differences?

CR: Yes, it is really interesting, and it makes me think about what reasonable expectations are in other countries. In the US, we have a lot of support, and in other places, there may be less. One difference that comes to mind is reasonable distances to walk. It's come up before with a partner, talking about a reasonable commute. They considered a reasonable distance to be 30 to 45 minutes; to us, that seems excessive. I don't think this necessarily came up in a disability context, but it shows that across cultures, we may have a different framework of what is considered a reasonable accommodation.

We run into cultural friction sometimes. There can be a mismatch between expectations on our end and expectations on their end. I think it’s important to consider where they’re coming from and why they think certain things are reasonable, as well as why we think our request is reasonable on our end. We want to find a good middle ground.

While we haven’t had many challenges with international providers, luckily, there have been times when we’ve had to realistically tell our students, hey, there is a big cultural difference in the place you’re going. Talking openly about your mental health can be really challenging there, and it may be something that you don't want to engage with your host family about. That can be really hard if somebody wants to be open about themselves and who they are. We have a conversation with students about this in relation to disability too, how important is it to you to have this as an open part of your identity?

Lily Wu (CGIS Peer Advisor): Earlier, you talked about your personal experience and why disability access is important to you, so I was wondering if there's anything you want to add about why this award specifically is important to you, or maybe why you think it's important that this recognition exists.

Callie Rouse (Senior Study Abroad Advisor): Yeah, absolutely. I think this is such a cool award, that it exists at all. I got my physical plaque at the Neubacher award ceremony, which is the big, grand, “you are the best of the best in disability advocacy and work on campus.” I also really appreciate that something like the Adam Miller Staff and Faculty Award exists, because it takes note of people whose job is not centered around disability, who aren't living and breathing this every single day, but who are making efforts toward cultural change and to impact people's lives through their daily work. One of the recent winners, I think, was somebody who worked in IT. Most of the time, [my work is focused on] study abroad, so I think it's really wonderful that there is an award that's like, hey, I recognize that this isn't a part of your job description, but you're doing this work because it's important to you.

LW: A bit earlier, you shouted out Rachel from our office for her work with housing accommodations. Are there any other colleagues that you'd like to acknowledge?

CR: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely Rachel, who was my first boss at CGIS, as well as the leadership team at the time when I came on. They gave me the time to work on the disability initiatives, and I really appreciated that they respected that that was something I was passionate about. I want to also mention [Assistant Director of SSD] Natalie Ridgway, whom I've worked with for many years now and has collaborated with and educated me on her side of campus. Also, the Global Engagement Team, under the Provost's office, like [Chief International Safety Officer] Patrick Morgan and [International Travel Safety Manager] Ayesha Usmani. They both have been part of the process.

As for other people in my office, I want to shout out Ellyse Vogel. She very kindly mentioned to the office that they should nominate me; I appreciate her, of course, as my nominator, but also for the work that she's doing around disability as well. I know she's been adding [disability information] to her orientations, and she attends events around disability like I do. It’s really nice to have a collaborator in the office for whom this is important as well. Overall, the office in general has been really supportive of this work that I've been doing, and I very much appreciate it.

I also want to say a thank you to those who wrote letters of support for me – Patrick Morgan, Natalie Ridgway, and CGIS’s Director Pardip Bolina – for the Adam Miller award. It means a lot to me, to be able to have this notation that the work I do is important. I also want to thank the overall CGIS team for continuing to care about disability access. There’s so much more that we can do, but I think we've done good work so far.

Lily Wu (CGIS Peer Advisor): Have you heard from students who have been personally impacted by these initiatives?

Callie Rouse (Senior Study Abroad Advisor): Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I talk with students about is the feeling of being reassured, that this is going to work, that we can figure this out. I get students who come and meet with me, and we have appointments where we can discuss disability accommodation as a clear-cut process. So, I've definitely heard from students that the way we run things and put things together has been smooth. I've worked with a couple of students who have had challenges post-arrival, too, and tried to smooth that process. For the most part, I've worked with students on the front end, making sure they're set up for success, and generally, it does work out.

LW: You’ve already offered the advice for students to start the accommodation process as soon as possible; do you have any other advice for students? What is one thing that you feel like students with disabilities should know before they go abroad?

CR: Besides starting the process early, I also advise students to be open about what accommodations they need. My recommendation is, don't bank on not needing them abroad. When I studied abroad, I got accommodations for my eyes, and I was lucky that in my classes, I ended up not needing my accommodations. Still, I appreciated having them in my back pocket. I was glad that I had gone through the effort of meeting with my disability coordinator and getting the documentation in place. I recommend that for all students who aren’t sure if they will need their accommodations abroad to get them in place anyway. You don't know what your experience is going to be like abroad, especially if you're doing a long-term experience, until you kind of get there.

Funding is something you may want to think about, too, for students. I was really lucky to receive vocational rehabilitation support. I was able, basically, to be classified as significantly disabled in my state, Iowa, and get financial support for my college education. I don't know how many students are able to have access to this, but I believe this support exists across various states in the U.S. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) is not enforced abroad, so there are certain things that you may anticipate would be covered, but that support doesn’t turn out to be automatic. You may have to provide for yourself certain things that your university would provide to you out of compliance with the ADA. Looking into resources, seeing if there are disability-related scholarships or support, would be good.

Otherwise, go abroad. We want students to be able to go abroad, and to feel like they can go abroad. If you disclose your disability to us before you get admitted, we don't factor that into your admission decision. We’re not allowed to, and we don’t want to.

Editor's Note: The ADA does not apply to countries/programs abroad. Because of this, we encourage students to do research about what legislation the host country has regarding disability, utilizing resources like the our partner organizations on the ground, your host university’s disability office, and UN's Disability Laws and Acts by Country/Area page.