 What we're trying to do in the Duet Center is to help students with disabilities be successful in college and careers, but also using technology as an empowering tool. I founded the Duet program in 1992 with a grant from the National Science Foundation, and the idea was to help students with disabilities from high school transition to college into graduate school and audit careers. We have summer programs for teens with disabilities to get ready for college. We have an online mentoring program and we work with faculty to help them make their courses accessible in technology companies and making their technology accessible to people with disabilities and even with parents to help their children with disabilities prepare for adult life. One of the things that makes the Duet Center unique is that we embrace students with a wide variety of disabilities. And so as we engage in all of our activities, students learn about one another's challenges and the access barriers that they face. Many of our projects are funded by the National Science Foundation. For example, Access Computing. We work with computing faculty nationwide to help them include students with disabilities in their programs. We have a similar project called Access Engineering where we work with engineering faculty. Another project that we have is called Access ISL, Informal Science Learning. And there we're working with people that develop museum exhibits, helping them make them more accessible to people with disabilities. The Duet Scholars Program is where we work with teens with disabilities to get them ready for college and careers. The Duet Scholars Program draws students from all over the state and we really work with each student to help them identify what post-secondary experience will be best for them and their family. What we find most important is to talk with that student about what they're interested in, where they want to go and help them go there. For the Duet Scholars Program, we'd like to start engaging students and families when they're sophomores in high school. We invite them to come and live with us on the university campus for three summers, after their sophomore year, after their junior year, and then as they're graduating high school. When the Duet Scholars are at summer camp, they take a lot of classes and courses with us. And so some of those are related to leadership and advocacy. Some of those are related to different career fields that they might want to learn about. And some of it is related to college access and how to advocate for what you might need in a college environment. We always love working with the Duet Scholars. They bring energy, creativity, and innovation to every program, whether it's the classroom, a summer program, or another event going on on campus. Access Engineering is a program where our goals are to both encourage more individuals with disabilities to pursue careers in engineering and to also train all of our engineers and principals of universal design. Access Engineering has partnered tightly with the Duet Center and the Scholars. Each summer we run instructional programs to help the Duet Scholars explore different career paths in engineering. However, the Duet Scholars also have helped us immensely in making the campus and in particular engineering more inclusive. For their third summer as high school graduates, many of whom have been accepted into college, they work as leaders and mentors to the younger students who are with us for the summer. I was one of the first Duet Scholars. The mentorship that I had early on from Duet was sufficient to show me how to actually mentor people. And that has specifically influenced my career because I manage people now. What my high school didn't necessarily have in the Duet program did was a community that focused on disability empowerment. It's very nice to finally be in a community where I didn't feel as isolated as I did in the past. The Duet Scholars program taught me that I really need to be willing to advocate for myself, not just out in the typical everyday world but in classes with professors and saying that's not going to work for me or I really need my extended time. I got into the program when I was a junior in high school and that was the first time that I met other people with disabilities who wanted to go to college, who had expectations that they were going to go to college and were thinking about a career even beyond. I've hired a lot of people in my life and I've never hired them because of what they can't do. It's always because of what they can do. And the Duet program, these kids have an opportunity to meet adults that see their opportunities before them and figure out how they can maximize the use of those skills and interests they have to be successful. For more information about Duet, you can go to our website, www.edu.com. Copyright, 2020, University of Washington.