 Okay, I think we've got a nice steady number here, so why don't we go ahead and get started? I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Hi, everyone. My name is Frank Marcik, and I'm a research scientist in the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering Department here at the University of Michigan. And what I want to do is share with you just a few slides here at the beginning, and then we'll go ahead and transition off to our speakers. The name of our webinar, our discussion really, we're hoping it to be today, is called supporting neurodiverse students in your summer, in your internship programs. We have a group of people, really, that are joining us today. I'm the one in the middle there. I'm the site director for the Picasso REU program here at the University of Michigan, as well as teaching a series of courses in meteorology and some first year student courses as well. The picture that you see in the middle is a selfie that I took with some students, because thanks to a nod from one of my colleagues, I have started hosting many of my office hours in the dining halls here at U of M, because it really shifts the dynamic. Instead of the students feeling awkward coming into my office, I have dinner with them, and it really, it works out very nicely. So Val, I'll just have everyone introduce themselves. Val and Shiva, and then we'll our other guests. So Val, do you want to introduce yourself? Oh, sure. Hi, everybody. My name is Val Sloan. I work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. My background is in Arctic and Alpine glacial geology. But now I work in higher ed and diversity topics, and support the geo REU community of people who run internships, as well as supporting postdocs and early career people here at NCAR. Shiva? Hey, my name is Shiva Priya Santana. I go by Shiva. I am an assistant professor at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. I'm a speech and language therapist by training. That's my clinical background. And I work at Bowling Green State University. It is in the state of Ohio in USA. And I'm going to be sharing some of the experiences from my work and what I have learned from both my research and my teaching with autistic college students. And so I hope the content of this presentation is helpful for for you all. Excellent. And we have two other guests with us. Akila, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Hi, everybody. My name is Akila Allwan. I am a PhD candidate at Auburn University of Earth System Science. I'll also be getting my master's in educational research measurement and evaluation this Friday. And I am a national science foundation and graduate research fellow and UCAR next generation DEI fellow and Southern Regional Education Board doctoral fellow. I'm standing in coal. Good afternoon every good morning afternoon evening would insert the time of day where you are in that sentence. My name is Cole Kingsbury and I am a research geologist at Thompson State University. It's in Siberia. And I study ancient volcanoes around the world either used to be in Canada now and then in South Africa. And now I'm doing work on the NSA Ridge in north of Krasnoyarsk. Outstanding. So thank you both of you. So before I hand it off, we just wanted to talk a little bit about the motivation of what has brought us all here today. We know that NSF and many different organizations are calling for us to broaden the possibilities or the opportunities and expand participation opportunities for groups, diverse groups from various institutions, geographical regions and that are underrepresented in STEM fields. And while that's all good and well and good to say that on paper, what that means is we need to have the tools and the training necessary to support those students from this diverse pool that we're developing for our programs. And so last year I welcomed in two students that I self identified as being on the autism spectrum. And we thought we had put in all the supports that we needed to make sure that this was a positive experience for the students. And I think it largely was. But then at the end, one of our students had trouble taking all that they had done and synthesizing it into a final poster. In fact, it was a very difficult time for the student. And I realized at that point that there was so much more that I needed to learn in order to support, you know, this wide breadth of neurodiversity that we see in our students. And so I reached out to Val and I said help. And as most of you know, when you when you reach out like that, oftentimes you you get involved in volunteering, if you will, to make some of those things happen as well. And so we earlier in the spring, we had a we had a small workshop in Nikila and Cole were part of that, in which we kind of talked about some of the different site leaders about what were some of the tools that we hope that that we could acquire to help us support our students. And this workshop that we're going to have today is actually one of the results of that initial and that initial workshop. And so one of us, you know, we have presenters, but you know, one of my colleagues I need a bone at the Office of Student Life here at U of M has noted that the wisdom is in the room, meaning we have some experts, we have folks who want to share their stories. But there are lots of stories and experiences that we all have. And we're looking forward to hearing everyone, you know, entering information into the chat or sharing in person. The session goals overall that we're looking for is a brief description of neurodiversity and unique strengths of and challenges of neurodiverse students. And but one of the things that came out of that initial meeting is folks really wanting some tangible things that they could use to support their students. Obviously, there are a range of different situations that we think of challenges, we think of that that follow fall under the neurodiverse. You know, heading, if you will, a unique one that's doing not on this list, but that I ran into a couple of years ago was I was actually having our students, you know, talking about careers, I was having them do it a visioning exercise. And afterward, this one of my participants came up and said, Well, they, you know, appreciated that that, you know, what we're trying to do with the visioning, but they said they, they had Appentasia, they said, which was that, you know, they could not actually, actually picture things in the future in their mind. So they had trouble, you know, when reading things, especially like flowery things about, oh, the scent of something, you know, of an orange in the room is sat on the table, they had trouble actually picturing that in their mind. And so they had to use different approaches to planning and things like that. So there's all kinds of, of things that we need to be cognizant of, you know, as, as, as site leaders. And so Shiva is going to provide us with, you know, talking about some of those supports and methods to assess whether or not we, we've been successful. So I'm going to turn it over to Shiva to go ahead and start her presentation. She has provided us with a few different resources. And now that it now that we seem to have most of our, our participants here with us, as she begins her presentation, I'm going to be sharing those resources in the chat feature. So you should be seeing those show up in just a couple of moments. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen. And I will turn it over to our speakers. Wonderful. Thank you so much for that introduction. Frank, it helps understand where you're all coming from. And I also wanted to say a big thank you. I usually people put their thank you slide at the very end. I kind of put it at the very beginning, because I wanted to say big thank you for taking this initiative. It is important for me and it's important for a lot of neurodiverse students that I support. I primarily work with autistic individuals. And so I'm a very fierce advocate of autistic people and their value in higher education and other settings. So thank you so much for having us be part of this. Some disclosures that I have to share every time I present, I'm required to share these. I'm a full-time employee at Bowling Green State University in the United States. I'm also the developer of a support program for college students on the autism spectrum. I'm a licensed speech and language therapist in the US. And I receive financial compensation for presenting today. And like I said, a very big thank you to you all. And here are my learning outcomes, which Frank has already discussed or mentioned. So I'm going to go ahead and jump into the content today. So these terms, several of you might be familiar with, but to bring everyone to the same page, I wanted to put these on a slide so everybody can both hear and read about these. So neurodiversity basically means a variation in neurocognitive function. Now what does that mean in like layman terms is if someone can understand information differently from what we are typically used to, someone who processes and perceives information differently from what, like I said, what we expect as the socially acceptable range, then that is what we mean by neurodiversity. Neurodivergent is the term used to refer to one individual person, and neurodiverse is used to refer to a group. And so the neurotypical, the word neurotypical is used to describe individuals who we traditionally have been describing them as normal or typical. And that you, that refers to individuals within the socially acceptable range. Now, the most important thing to understand here is that neurodiverse people are a minority in the entire human population, but the term neurodiversity itself comprises the entire human race, which means each of us is very different from the other in how our brain processes information and how our brain understands how we communicate, how we interact socially, how we learn and everything else. So the neurodiversity movement, it started out as a political movement initially, and I'm going to move you all to another screen, so I can have my slides here. There we go. It started out as a social political movement, and there is a common myth about the neurodiversity movement that it only perpetuates or propagates strengths and not challenges, and that we ignore the challenges that neurodiverse individuals experience in their daily lives. And that is a very common myth, and it is, again, as we say, it is a myth, therefore not a fact. The neurodiversity movement endorses accommodations, which means we identify, recognize and offer the supports that neurodiverse individuals need to be successful, efficient, and have a fulfilling life. We do not deny any services, and it is not about speaking only of the strengths, but also acknowledging that neurodiverse individuals have challenges in their daily lives. So the neurodiversity movement as such asks for increased inclusion and respect for all individuals irrespective of their age and type of disability. So I personally do not identify as a neurodivergent person. I am not autistic. I use the term autistic when I describe the individuals, my students, or my clients that I support. I also use the term person on the autism spectrum. I also often like to ask people what their preferences, I should say I always ask people what their preferences when I talk to them, and I encourage other people to do that as well. Several of my students do not have a preference. They are okay with either one, and they don't really mind, and parents of several of my students also do not have a preference sometimes, but some people actually do have a preference. So it's okay to ask people. I wanted to introduce these two models here. One is, and I'll tell you why this is important for our discussion today, one is called the medical model of disability. According to this model, any disabled person experiences challenges, which we call impairments, right? So when we describe these impairments, they are often described as challenges that are intrinsic, or challenges that are inherent, that live within the person. So what we try to do when we approach a disabled person through the lens of the medical model is that we try to reduce the challenges, remove the challenges, or make the disabled person different from who they are not. So we try to modify in a lot of ways their true identity. We modify how their challenges or disability presents itself. And we believe that the challenges that a disabled person experiences in their daily life is because they have that condition. And you can replace the word condition with any term that falls within the neurodiversity umbrella, which includes autism and attention deficit hyperactivity, fetal alcohol syndrome, mental health challenges, dyslexia, all of those fall under the neurodiversity umbrella. So in contrast to the medical model is the social model. And this is what I prefer using in my work. And it informs a lot of my current research, my teaching, and my clinical practice is the social model believes that a person is disabled not because they have intrinsic challenges, but because there are barriers that are set up within the environment or the society that do not allow the disabled person to actually complete activities of their daily life. So the social environment is the one that actually makes them disabled. And in a lot of clinical practice, sometimes we tend to use a combination of both because it is required, especially in countries such as the United States where healthcare is highly dependent on private health insurance systems or federal health insurance systems. We have to go by the medical model a lot of times, even if we don't have a preference. So for example, diagnosing a person, providing them a clinical diagnosis, writing reports that primarily talk only about the challenges that the person experiences, all of these fall within the medical model, because we need that we need to show proof or evidence to the health insurance companies that this person needs services. So in order to do that, we have to follow some protocol. Whereas in other countries, you might have a little bit more of an open mechanism where you might actually not need a diagnosis and you might still be able to receive all the supports that you need, either through private pay or through federally supported, like the government supported health insurance or services. So today with that brief introduction, I want to jump into the main crux of what we're doing today is to share strategies and what you can take home with you to when you support autistic students, undergraduates within your internship programs. So I'd start with this very broad slide, and I'm encouraging you to pay attention to the different communication strengths and differences that your students demonstrate. The second thing I'm encouraging you to pay attention is to their sensory preferences and differences. So the first category is communication, the second category is sensory, and the third category is how they learn. So these are three areas that I'm encouraging you to start paying attention to as you're supporting or working with your internship students. So I'll pause there for a second. Here's an activity for everyone. Please feel free to contribute via Zoom or you can unmute yourself and speak through the microphone. What do you value about any neurodivergent student that you have had? Or if you are neurodivergent yourself, what do you think adds value? What is your value in the work or training that you are engaged in? Thanks, Frank. Yes. Honesty and directness. Uh-huh. Oh, thank you. Wonderful. I love that. Wonderful. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Those are absolutely, absolutely what I'm going to be talking about as well. Um, thank you so much. Yes. Yes. So, uh, communication, strengths and differences, and as Frank started out this response here, honesty is the first thing that I'm going to mention here as well. When I'm primarily talking about autistic students that I have supported or engaged with, um, autistic students and other neurodivergent students, diverse students, um, have a high tendency to be honest. Now, um, this can come across as direct and abrupt sometimes, but, um, their communication is always honest. I've never seen or never had an experience with any of my autistic students, um, ever lied to me or, uh, you know, tried to deceive me or say things that are, you know, uh, manipulative. So, uh, it's, it's actually one of the most valuable qualities that I have seen, um, in my students. Um, they are multimodal, whether it's communication or engagement with activities. Um, they're always trying to use whatever modality they can, um, in order to convey the information or communicate with, with other individuals. They are highly empathetic individuals, contrary to popular belief that a lot of, you know, discussions exist in, um, either within research or even within, uh, media, like TV shows and movies that autistic people lack empathy, which is just absolute, you know, a false statement because, um, there is a high level of empathy that, that autistic people, um, have, uh, both for, um, you know, emotional empathy where they can understand another person's empathy, um, and, and social empathy. They understand a group, you know, of people's, uh, emotions and, and what they experience as well. These are both very important and, um, for a person to be having a fulfilling life. And because, uh, what we're used to is seeing empathy expressed in a certain way. And when we don't see that expressed in, in the autistic population, we think that autistic people lack empathy. Um, and that's absolutely not true. Um, lots of autistic students are highly detail oriented. They provide specific details, whether that's written communication or spoken communication. Um, they tend to be very direct. Um, and that's, that's helpful, especially if you are, um, writing about a research topic that, that you have explored or, um, uh, an experiment that you have conducted. It's important to be specific. It's important to be detail oriented and direct. And all of those are great strengths, um, that autistic individuals have. Um, the, in terms of differences, um, autistic individuals tend to not maintain eye contact in the way that we're typically used to, um, eye contact. Um, there are differences in the sense that some autistic people might, um, look at you a lot. Um, and you might also almost feel like they're peering into their eyes. Um, and some autistic people do not look at you while they're speaking. Um, and that's completely normal for them. Um, for someone who's not autistic, this might look very different because, um, they're not used to seeing someone, um, who does not maintain eye contact. The second thing is, um, the use of non-literal language or figurative language. Now, again, um, some autistic individuals have challenges with understanding figurative language when we use expressions like, um, you know, walking on eggshells or, you know, things like that. When, when you're using expressions like that, it, it's hard for some autistic individuals, not all autistic individuals, but some of them. It's hard for them to understand. Um, and it's hard. Sometimes they don't use it as well. Several of my students tell me that they reverse these, um, expressions and they use them. Um, I find it quite common to people who speak English as their second language, um, you know, or people who learn other languages. When we learn a new language, we actually don't learn, um, you know, the, the expressions and the idioms and, you know, things like that. So, so there, you don't lose much by not knowing those expressions. So I always encourage professors or, you know, mentors to be more explicit when they're communicating with their neurodiverse students and try to avoid any flowery figurative language if they can. Um, facial expressions, again, this is something we're used to seeing facial expressions a certain way when we look at non-autistic people. So when we look at autistic people or other neurodiverse individuals, we expect a certain type of facial expressions, whether it's anger or sadness, but one should remember that the way facial expressions are processed in the brain and how we all process an emotion in the brain is very different. And so facial expressions may not always look the same. Um, in a class, when you're teaching, you might all almost have a flat affect for someone, but that person might be very highly engaged. You just don't think that is engagement because you think of engagement in a certain way. So, um, when that person does not engage in the way that you expect them to engage, you think that person's not engaging. So, um, and that's why I'm going to share some tools here that, that help you actually understand if, if the, if the autistic person or the neurodiverse student is actually engaging. Processing time. Now this is very, very important. Every time I speak to professors, I speak to any kind of supervisors. I tell them, um, you know, how to pay attention to the processing time. When we give a direction, whether it's written direction in an email or a piece of paper or a spoken direction, we always almost expect a quick response, like within a few seconds. Um, people process information differently. Some people might need a minute. Um, in a lecture, for example, when you ask a question, some people might need 15 seconds to respond. Some people might need a minute to respond. So you have to allow people that time. I typically, what I do in my emails, when I write to neurodiverse students or, you know, autistic students primarily is I say, I would like to, um, you know, have some solution or feedback to you by this date or, um, please respond to my email within this, within 5pm on Friday or something like that. So I give them enough time to, to actually read the email, um, and think about it and respond. So that processing time is very, very important. And remember that we're all bombarded with information from multiple sources in our lives. It's social media. It's the news channels. It is, you know, what you're reading, what you're studying, it's, it's everything. So, um, so we need to allow that, that additional response time for people to, um, when you're communicating. Um, and so that tends to be a difference in, in autistic people as well. Social cues, both comprehension and use of social cues. Um, the way that autistic individuals pick up on social cues again looks very different from the way that we're typically used to. Um, and some autistic individuals who want to learn how non-autistic people engage socially actually make the effort to learn how to interpret non-autistic social cues. I think it's important for non-autistic people, who are the majority, to learn how neurodiverse or autistic people engage in social cues as well. It should be a two-way street. It should be, it shouldn't be like the whole burden falls on the autistic person to learn how non-autistic people communicate and engage, but it's all, should also fall on, the burden should also be equally falling on the non-autistic people to learn and engage about neurodiversity and about autistic people. Now, I want to make it very clear here that even though you might not have in, in, you know, interacted or come across many students who may, who may not be speaking or, um, who may be using a communication device such as an electronic device or a sign language to communicate, this is something that you may want to take into consideration because I am seeing right now a lot of my core researchers are semi-speaking individuals. My entire Zoom meeting happens in a way where I'm the only speaking person. As in, you know, my primary modality is speech. My collaborators are sitting in the same Zoom room and they are all typing or pressing a certain button and their devices are speaking back to me. So these are things that one has to get trained in, be willing and flexible to incorporate in your trainings as well because the, um, the individual, the contribution of all these individuals is just phenomenal. And I, and I always beat myself up thinking, what was I doing all these years? Not incorporating their, their voices or their experiences into my work. Like, why didn't I even tap into the, the ability of this population? So, so I want you to always keep thinking that not all students you have are going to be, um, using speech as their primary modality. So they might be multimodal communicators, they might be using other modalities of communication as well. So, um, when I talk about, um, I'll quickly jump through this slide, sensory differences or sensory preferences. Um, lots of neurodiverse individuals, um, have preferences for certain types of, um, sensory inputs and, and some sensory input can be either, um, you know, provoking distress or anxiety for them. It can be a certain type of sound, a noise. It can be a light in the room. It can be just multiple people in the room. Um, it can be a smell. It can be texture fabric. Um, I've had autistic students tell me that it is sometimes even, um, just spending time on social media can be a huge, you know, overstimulation for their senses. So, um, these are some things that, that you may want to be aware of and how they spend their day, you know, how much time they're spending in these environments. Several of my autistic students are gamers. They spend about eight, nine hours a day video gaming on days that they don't have to go to school or university. Um, you know, so they, in that space, their engagement with, of their senses is very different from how their senses are engaged when they're in, in person, um, interactions with other people. So these are things that you want to keep in mind and, um, and identify how the sensory environment is constructed or how you're going to support this neurodiverse student by modifying, um, the environment. So the way to do that really is to ask the student, because there's just no way, um, that you'll be able to know everybody's sensory preferences or differences, right? So the best way to do is to ask them, um, what has been most helpful to you? What should I cut off or remove from this, from the room? If it is an online zoom or like Microsoft Teams meeting or something, what do I need to do to make that virtual environment more sensory friendly for you? It's not always the physical environment. Um, and what can I do to make it easier on you? Um, that could be simple things like providing breaks within, um, activities. Um, I often, in my one hour classes, provide at least two breaks. This can just be, um, you know, just getting up, stretching your hands, um, or taking a sip of water and not doing anything. Just putting your head down, you know, stop taking notes, stop writing things, stop, you know, stop doing everything. Just take a two minute break and two minutes to transition back. So it feels like, oh my gosh, I'm losing five minutes of my precious one hour class. They already have so much content to cover and so many projects to complete. You know, um, it feels like that initially, but in the long run, it, it helps you and, and it helps the student. Um, so, so those are things that I want to want you to keep in mind as well as your, um, supporting students. The other thing to keep in mind is the, the third area is the learning differences. Um, so we need to start acknowledging that our neurodiverse students are, um, extremely valuable contributors. They're out-of-the-box thinkers and like several of you said, they're creative, they're detail-oriented, they have any, a wonderful ability to focus intensely, especially if the topics or the activities are of high interest to them, um, which is an amazing skill to have. We need that kind of, um, interest and, and passion when we are engaged in any type of research. Um, and what else do we need, right? So, um, but in terms of challenges, one needs to keep in mind that when a person is neurodiverse, they do, uh, bring to the table some challenges. Now these challenges can be things like, um, you know, um, having, you know, being, being disturbed or disrupted, um, by the things that are going on in their environment. Challenges with planning information, knowing when to do what, when to finish, um, you know, writing the results, when, how do I plan when I have to run this experiment in the lab? How do I contact my mentor or supervisor? You know, these can be things like if I have a presentation or a conference that come, that's, that's coming up in October, what do I need to do now? So for a lot of students, um, I use a backward planning template where, uh, we take the final, uh, you know, goal in mind and then we start planning backwards. Like what do I need to do on the day of the presentation? What do I need to do before, like a week before, a one week before, and what do I need to do now to get ready for that presentation? So, um, these are things that might want to keep in mind, whether that's memory, planning, organization, time management, all of these things are challenging for several neurodiverse students. They need a ton of support in these areas. Um, and so as much as sometimes it might be in the initial days, a lot of hand holding, a lot of, um, you know, back and forth interaction with the student, trying to find out what can I do to manage your time better. Um, so you might feel like you're spending a little bit more time with this neurodiverse student than you are with, um, your non-autistic student, for example. Um, and, and, and what it helps with is that the student is one successful, you get a great, um, you know, collaboration with the student and whatever you're developing, your project or your paper, your outcome is going to be, um, is going to be phenomenal as well. So, um, I know we don't have a ton of time. We could do discussions on just like worksheets for, you know, how do we plan better? How do we manage your time better? What are some things that we need to consider here? So those are, um, you know, items to keep in mind when you're planning for the learning differences that neurodiverse students bring, um, to the table as well. So, um, I'll move to, um, you know, some of the barriers. Um, what I described by challenges are not intrinsic challenges here, but these are challenges that are presented to the neurodiverse students by their environment. Um, these can be in the form of misunderstandings or misperceptions, um, from other people, especially the non-disabled community. It can be, uh, you know, lack of clarity or on what is expected or what directions the students, the student needs. Um, sometimes, you know, mentors and professors tend to like throw out some directions. And then, um, we, it's very hard for us to know, you know, whether this is clear enough, is this specific enough? Um, and so that can be sometimes very confusing for neurodiverse students. So actually spending time, um, writing your directions very clearly is very important. One rule of thumb that I use when I'm writing directions for students, whether it's for a project in my lab or it's an assignment for a class that I'm teaching. Um, one rule of thumb I follow is every sentence must have only one message. So even if I have to break it down into multiple short sentences, I do not imply things. I do not, you know, sugarcoat things. Um, I'm very direct. Um, I'm also very explicit with my directions and each sentence has one message only. I don't try to crowd with like multiple conjunctions, compound sentences and stuff like that. So that's, that's an important, um, you know, um, um, strategy to keep in mind. The other thing is, um, is experience of stigma. This can come across as discrimination, bullying, um, you know, harassment and stereotyping of neurodiverse individuals. There is a whole, um, book that my, some of my colleagues and I are writing about misconceptions and mids associated with neurodiversity. Um, and I can go on and on about that. It's, um, it's pervasive everywhere in every environment. Um, and so we often, when I have heard these things, I, you know, I've shot, I've been shocked initially. I've been like really in my university, autistic students are being bullied. They're being discriminated. Wow. Like I didn't even know that, you know, that's been my initial reaction, but the reality is this is happening in front of us, just around us all the time. And one cannot deny, um, that it is happening. Um, the other, um, you know, attribute or, or aspect of these, um, challenges or barriers is the unreasonable expectations for social interaction. A lot of times group meetings, like, you know, when we have a meeting for my lab or some of my classes, we have like an honors thesis project and all of the honors students meet and everybody wants to meet at a bar and that might not be the most friendly space for, um, for several of our neurodiverse students. They might want to be outside maybe, you know, so finding out what might be the most, um, you know, friendly space in terms of social interaction, that is very important to, to find, find out from the students. And if students don't show up for those social gatherings, it's all right, you know, they shouldn't be penalized for that. Nobody should, you know, we shouldn't hold it against them. Um, we shouldn't be like, oh, you didn't come to that party. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to talk to you. You know, it says that we have to lose, kind of lose all of that pettiness, um, when we expect what we expect in our social interactions. Um, and I'm not saying you all do this, but these happen in daily life because students experience this. And remember, a lot of undergraduate students are in their early twenties. They are in their late teens. And so this is the time they're actually trying to figure out their identity. They want to be socially included. At the same time, they know that their social interaction settings are quite challenging and they feel like this is overwhelming for them. And so when there is that conflict of I want to be in that social space, but I'm still finding it overwhelming, that can be very confusing for them. So, um, we, we want, you know, it's important for us to be more sensitive to that, um, when we're, when we're expecting, you know, what we're expecting out of social interactions. Um, lack of understanding and appreciation. All of this that I said often leads to social isolation, being alone, not having a space to, to engage and interact. Um, a primary area of my research, um, focuses on reducing social interact, social isolations by increasing or providing opportunities for, for social interaction between autistic students, whether they're high school students or college age students. And we use video gaming as a platform, um, for interaction. So I tap into their own, um, intense or focused interests, um, in order to build peer networks and peer supports for them, um, to be, uh, to reduce social isolation. The final point here that I want you to keep in mind is our societies are highly, highly influenced by ableist tendencies, which means we all in the core believe that, um, non disabled people are in some ways better than disabled people. Um, and we have to accept that as a fact and therefore we trust these beliefs on the disabled individuals in our community. Therefore, what happens is whether these come from parents or other members of the community, a lot of neurodiverse students internalize these negative evaluations, they experience low self-esteem, they start experiencing what is called an internalized ableism. Um, even though they resist ableism outwardly, um, in, in their minds, they feel like they are in some ways lesser than someone who does not have that diagnosed condition. And this is very important to acknowledge because, um, we deny this and we don't speak about it enough. Um, but our students need a lot of support. This is one of the main or core reasons that contributes to mental health challenges for several of our neurodiverse students. Now, this is a whole new topic that I could go on for three hours. Barriers are more for women or people who identify with the feminine gender. We are expected to be more tactful, more social, we're judged more harshly. I'm going to be sharing all these slides with you. So please take a few minutes to watch this very, you know, very well done video. It takes you to a YouTube link. Um, and it helps you learn more about the challenges of women. So common reasons for, um, why mentors and supervisors or professors avoid or hesitate to provide supports for neurodiverse students is one lack of knowledge, even if they want to, they don't know how to. The other is there might be some inherent negative perceptions. There's a lot more time and money and effort spent on this. Oh, I need more resources. My system or my organization does not provide me these resources. What incentive do I get to do these things? Why should I care? You know, does it impact my work? If I have only one student in my lab among 10 students, you know, and that only one student is neurodiverse, why should I spend that extra time? What incentive am I getting for that? So those are questions that I'm commonly asked. And these are things that I want you to reflect on as well. So strategies, how much time do we have? Do I have? Um, good. No, you go ahead. I was going to say, um, we want to make sure that, um, that our other speakers have an opportunity. So, uh, another five minutes or so is that okay. Sounds good. We can come back with questions to, you know, address some of these on your slide. Sounds wonderful. Okay. So, um, what I'm encouraging for you all to do is focus on these five elements, the structure, the clarity, um, of the instructions and the supports that you're providing your neurodiverse students. Use more flexibility in your approaches. Provide opportunities for practice as much as you can and always, always use appreciation. When I say appreciation, it's not just praise, but also increased understanding. Here are some resources that I'm going to share with these slides. One is a resource booklet that I developed. This addresses common questions about disclosure, you know, disruption in the classroom and, you know, replace the classroom with your internship environment. Um, this was developed for a university setting for in the classroom kind of situation. Um, and I developed this in collaboration with, um, one autistic professor, um, and couple autistic students along with another team of professors. So that resources there available for you, um, as much as you can advocate for people, neurodiverse people in your environments. I want to spend more time on this. So the remaining four or four or so minutes that I have, I'll spend time on this, but I'll share that, you know, you have all these resources available for you. If you need to find an expert or a consultant in your area, there's a link for you to go click on the map and it'll take you to a statewide, you know, consultant, um, to support you. Um, there's also like autism specific college programs, though that again, there is a map there for you. Um, you know, and then the focused interest, I'll talk, I'll talk about that in a minute as well. So, um, I'm going to, if you want to click on the Word document that Frank had shared, um, that has an initial, uh, meeting questionnaire. It's somewhere in the chat. So, um, if you want to click open that, that should take you to a, um, a document. And in that document, you will see the following questions. Um, this is the document that I created. When you meet with your neurodiverse student, neurodivergent student for the first time. So, um, have this as a way to understand or, um, get input from the student to learn more about them. Um, I also use this questionnaire to share with the student how I communicate and how I grade and what are my expectations in terms of evaluating the student's performance. So here, I typically write a short paragraph about my communication style. And then I ask the student, what is your preferred communication method? Um, the way I envision this questionnaire to be completed, and I've, and I've tried it with several of my students here, is we first, um, you know, meet either in person or virtually, we complete it individually, and then we share our responses and we talk through our responses. That is how I use this questionnaire. So, um, it is not something that you fill out and then email it to the person and then you're done. So it doesn't work like that. You'll have to take these responses and talk through these responses with your student. How often do you prefer to check in with me? This may be like many times a week, maybe two or three times a week, or maybe once every week, or, you know, whatever your frequency is, you can adapt that. Um, you know, this is how I want to grade. So add your rubric here. This is how, and be very clear about what you, what you're mentioning here. And then, um, what areas of performance you want them to grow in? What, what are you expecting out of them? And what supports are you willing to provide to help them do well in these areas? When students have questions, oftentimes when I present this rubric, students are confused because they're like, I don't even know what my project is. So what is this rubric? And so, I tell them that as your project comes up, you know, I'll present this rubric again, and then we'll work through it. And we can see what aspects of it are confusing and let's support you with that. During the time that we work together, let us lay down expectations for each other. This is very, very important in my opinion, because what you have as your expectations for the entire lab or the whole group may be very different from what you have specific to this one year divergent student. And so lay down what those expectations are. Again, this comes out of a discussion as well. And if there are misunderstandings, misconceptions, you know, I've had professors tell me, Oh, that student was very rude. I don't even want to work with her. So the chances are that student was not intending to be rude, and she just probably had direct communication style. And the professor might have been like, Oh, she didn't sugarcoat it. She just said it, you know, very bluntly. And so you might want to discuss this is why the communication style piece here is very important. And discuss, you know, what was confusing and you might need a mediator sometimes in these situations. So how, you know, when a confused, so laying that expectation right off the bat, like if I have a misunderstanding, what am I going to do? Are we going to speak about it? Are we going to email? Can we meet outside the lab outside? Like, you know, like Frank just said in the beginning of this meeting, can we meet like in the dining hall, for example, working in groups. Now this is huge. One of the current projects that I'm doing right now is looking at communication experiences of autistic students and non-autistic students when they when they engage in group assignments. This is a huge problem for several neurodiverse students because our group expectations are very different. And when we engage in groups, we don't know what are some unwritten hidden rules are for group interaction. And so being very explicit about it, what is your preference? How big should a group be? What is a small group? Do we have a flexibility for meeting in like in a hybrid format? Like, does everybody have to be in the same room? You know, those kinds of things are important to talk about. And if you do have to meet as a group, having very clear roles for each person in the group is super crucial. So brainstorming how you want to support the student, what technology you use, what technology I use, and how can we both be in the same page. And so I've categorized these as I don't know if you've noticed, but the first part is communication. The second part is learning. And the third part is sensory supports, just those three areas that I described in the very beginning. So, you know, what do you do when you experience anxiety? Some students might not have any coping strategies. So it's all right to sit down with them and brainstorm some coping strategies. You know, what supports have been helpful for you to learn well in the past, you know, what can we use that? How can we use that? And then what are your sensory needs or preferences? What can I do to reduce these challenges? So oftentimes, if you make the effort and show that you're willing to work with the student, that is huge because students rarely see this level of support from anyone. So when your diverse students come to me, they're like, wow, you're taking so much time to develop such detail, you know, so much support for me. Nobody's ever done this for me. And that's, you know, very valuable feedback for you. That's reinforcement for you to want to do it more. Because it's the most magical thing when you see each of your mentees succeed in life, right? So this is, you know, what I'm describing in this slide here. So finally, I'll leave this, I think I'm going to leave that slide for now. I'm going to stop talking right there. I think across the five minutes, probably gone beyond. So I'll stop talking there. Let Akila and Cole take over from here. And I'll stop sharing my screen. Yes, thank you very much. And I think that everyone should have that document. And I think that certainly some of the things that you mentioned are just the type of things on this document that many of our participants in that initial workshop were really wanting to do is everyone has the best intentions of wanting to be able to create the environment. I think that document, especially how you broke it down, is really going to be helpful to people. So as you mentioned, we have a couple of other special guests that want to share their personal perspectives on things that they have found particularly beneficial. And they hope that people understand and learn in this type of support. And so Akila, why don't we go ahead and start with you any types of sessions that you or suggestions you may have. Yeah. So for me, I think one of the biggest things that I've learned, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I might also have bipolar disorder and a really big thing for me that I've had to learn. One is advocacy, self-advocacy, how to communicate to professors, PIs, amongst your peers, really in any situation in which you have needs that differ from other folks. Because as you've explained the difference between neurodivergent and neurotypical folks, we place this ableist perspective on neurodivergent people to behave in the norms. And so I think thinking about how you can, particularly for programs that prioritize mentorship, how you could incorporate discussions on self-advocacy in those mentorship trainings, so both how you can teach your mentors to support students in self-advocacy and how you can support students in seeking advocacy amongst their mentors and the PIs of your program. My second thought is on time management and organization. That is a huge struggle for me. I've always been a procrastinator in high school. I had amazing test grades and terrible homework grades, because as an athlete and in student government and orchestra, I just had so many things in hyper fixations, but so little time to do them. And because of all my involvement, I have learned better time management. It's not necessarily something that was taught, but I think if I was taught it much sooner than I learned it, I would have been struggling far less longer. So I think time management in the context of your program, because for me, for example, one program I did, actually most programs I've done, that were where we were working and each student was working in a different lab, we all had very, very, very different schedules. Me personally, I had to take medication that made it hard to wake up in the morning. So I always, one of the first conversations I have when discussing summer programs and labs is what is your expectation for me to be here in the morning? What is your expectation of when I'm supposed to leave? How many hours should I work? Having flexibility in the range of opportunities that you have for your students in terms of that is great, but also communicating with everyone involved that students are coming, they're all coming from all over and have very different schedules, live and work in very different time zones. And so how can we accommodate people's working schedules? I know even when I'm communicating with folks at UCAR, many folks have in their emails, my working day may not be your working day, but we don't frequently have that expectation for students and I don't think that's fair because students in the same way, during the school year work from midnight to six o'clock in the morning and those are their most productive hours. In summary, what I'm saying is both teaching time management and organization as well as respecting that everybody works on a different timeline and time frame than each other. Awesome. Thank you. And could I ask you to expand a little bit? You mentioned the importance of the mentor providing an environment where the student feels comfortable advocating for themselves. Can you talk about what it is that mentors can do to create that environment? Yeah. So I think just from the very beginning, the introduction, getting to know who will be, who the mentors are, letting your students know that you're willing to accommodate them, but in order to accommodate them, they have to let you know what their needs are because we can assume only so far and those assumptions may be wrong. For example, with my advisor, it's been a learning process for her, but we discuss a lot. She's a morning person and again, mornings are extremely difficult for me. I'm so tired sometimes that it's almost like being intoxicated. I'm not functional. And so I've been advocating for myself whenever she tries to schedule something early in the morning that I know I can't do it and finally one day we did meet a little earlier than usual and I was at the library until midnight and she saw finally what I was talking about when I say I'm not functional, if I don't get enough sleep. And her realization of, oh, this is what you've been talking about. Unfortunately, it took her actually seeing it to get there. But she was willing to work for me because she was being flexible. So I think what it comes down to is open dialogue and discussion and flexibility creates the environment for students to successfully advocate for themselves because they feel comfortable and they can trust you. Trust is really big for self-advocacy. Because if I know, if I have, you know, most of what I have to speak up for myself is uncomfortable. And if it's uncomfortable and I don't trust that you're actually going to take me seriously or do anything about what I'm saying, what is the incentive for me to go to you in the first place? Excellent. Thank you very much for that, sharing that. Cole, it's Wednesday morning. So I know this is great for you to be up so late, but what thoughts do you have you want to share? Yeah, so I've just been dropping notes as the things go along. So I want to piggyback with Akilah on the need to be flexible. As I said in the chat, there are as many ways of being autistic as there are autistic students. Just like there's as many ways of being a volcano as there are volcanoes on earth, each are a little bit different. And so assumptions that are, you know, may be useful for one, may be detrimental for the others. So again, so first of all, yeah, so in regards to about, you know, the flexibility of work that touches on two key aspects, sensory needs, as well as energy management. And I'd like to first talk a bit about energy management. And so there are two predominant ways of thinking about work. There's project management, and then there's time management. But there's someone by the name of Brittany Berger has introduced the framework of energy management. So every time you, from when from the moment you open your eyes at the end at the beginning of each day, until the time that you go to bed every night, every activity costs a certain amount of energy. And that's in some people refer to those as, you know, spoons. So you, so for example, if you have a 10 or 15 spoon day, then that's the amount of energy that you have that day. But some days, you may only have three or four spoons. And so arriving at, you know, the internship process in the framework of energy management, I think is useful. What I, about, you know, what was it, three, four or five months ago, when it was still negative 20 out here. I mentioned that from the supervisors thing, that it'd be nice to have a plan B every day. So for example, if you are, if today's task is to do such and such, but the, but someone it may not have enough energy to get that thing done, it happens, then maybe move towards a plan B that acknowledges that day's energies. As for me, speaking personally, what every time I have a very, very, very super duper productive day that almost inevitably is followed by a crash day. And so that's how I, so basically my, my weeks are, you know, Mondays and Tuesdays are kind of, you know, if Mondays are my, if Monday is my super duper productive day, then Tuesday is my crash day. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday gets kind of ironed out. And then of course, if Monday is a crash day, then Tuesday would could be very productive. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is sort of irons those out. So when you see someone who is having a very, very, very super duper productive day, celebrate it, but maybe plan in your head a potential plan B just in the back of your mind. So plan B could be, like I said before, one of the deliverables of an internship may be the presentation of a conference, which inevitably, inevitably means preparing an abstract. So that's one idea for plan B. And I just, just crossed my mind right here is another way that I have set up my work is that I use Dropbox extensively. And so I have Dropbox on my computer at my office, which I lovingly call the dungeon. And then, and then also here in my, in my, in my room. And I have file and I have access to all my files in every which way. And then I even have Dropbox on my phone. So, you know, if I go out on field excursions to, you know, in the middle of the Tyga forest, and there happens to be a cell tower nearby, well, I at least have access to my files on my phone. So this offers the opportunity to do some work here. Like for example, if I don't have the energy to maybe walk to campus or in back, I can do some work here. And then I can, you know, do some work here in the morning and then in the afternoon go into the office. And so that is how I, you know, it allows me to get some work done in the morning. Even though I think, you know, even though I'm the kind of person that thinks mornings should be banned. But let's see. But yeah, another thing is that I'd like to amplify the thing that Akilah was saying is the issue of trust. I am now 38 years old. And I still remember my time as a daycare person. I can recall my daycare days vividly for not good reasons. And I was, you know, let's just say I was experienced the B word bullied. And so, you know, being teased not just by fellow daycare students, but also the people that were supposedly employed to protect and defend me against such stuff. So ever since then, I've had, you know, questions of, you know, I've had issues with the issues of trust. And so for many people on the autism spectrum, as well as, you know, neurodiverse cousins, the issue of trust needs to be earned. And so that's another thing. And so another thing that I'd like to sit see touch upon, I wrote down these very bizarrely looking notes, and I'm trying to think presentation planning and meetings. Siva, you mentioned alternative meeting ways of doing alternative meetings. And you mentioned that many of your students like gaming. I'm wondering, so this harkens back to my time when I was living in South Africa, when the world shut down and air travel prohibit, basically, caused me to stay in South Africa due to a virus. And so I had to figure out ways to, you know, use my time. And one way I, that I use my time was Minecraft. There was a server called Autcraft, which uses the Minecraft interface. And so perhaps, maybe, you know, once every so often, having a meeting on Minecraft might be an interesting to do this. And so, yeah, I see trust. And so obviously, I had in my notes to mention the Rainmaker et al paper, but that has already been taken care of. And also, yeah, so I guess another sort of standard thing is matching skills, matching duties with skills, and also preparing students for just in time skills, a skill set in the just in time. So for a lot, I'm guessing a lot of you are in meteorology or climatology or atmospheric science. And so maybe when you think about duties and skills, think about what would be useful five or 10, you know, three to five or 10 years down the line, you know, emerging technologies, because if you learn those technologies early, they can be easy, they can be more employable later on. So that's that that's, I don't know how much time I have left, but if there's any opportunities for questions, I'd be happy to have it. Yeah, yeah, excellent. And I wanted to just, you know, piggyback on something you mentioned, Cole about presentations. I know that one of the things I think I learned last year with my with one of my students who had ADHD and anxiety was that the typical thing in a program is you're doing your research, and then you say, okay, this last week, we're going to all work on a posters and get those ready. And that ended up being that timeframe of saying, okay, now we're actually going to, you know, we had a the first week we talked about how you make a poster, but we didn't actually direct program activities to helping the students make the poster until that last three day period before we printed them out. And I think that the lesson I really learned there was that, you know, that process of making, you know, for some students that process of making a poster needs to start well in advance, because trying in a short amount of time to take all the disparate parts of their research and try to synthesize it into a final message was really difficult for my for my student. Yeah. So there's Yeah, so there are generally two types of presentations. There's poster and then there's oral and I've I've made and I remember my first time printing a poster and and doing a poster and let's just say it was it was a lot bigger than I had planned because it was a zero. And it and just it was a really it it takes a while. So what I like to what I've done in post I'm a I'm better at speaking than than creating posters, but nonetheless, one of the things that I've learned in terms of posters is be the tortoise and not the hare. So I like to you know, if the goal is to present a poster, maybe start a few weeks, a few weeks, a couple, two or three weeks ahead of time. And just, you know, a little each day over a lot of days can really add up and be a good multiplier. From also from a presentation, a oral presentation perspective. I typically focus on one or two slides a day, and I make them and I make them really detailed. And then I leave the last two days. I leave the last two or three days to write the script. And I do scripting. So every page corresponds with a single slide. And I make and I make the font like 24 point a spaced three space three times. And that that workflow has really helped me. And I also make a point at ending all oral presentation preparation 24 hours prior to the actual presentation. So I so that's that just allows me time to sleep on what I'm going to be saying and then and then making the presentation. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I think one of the things we'd have the reason why we have this as being an hour and a half is we wanted to have, you know, time for the presentations and lots of questions that people, you know, participating might have. So please feel free to add in questions into the chat and ask questions of our of our guests here. That would be excellent as well. Okay. Yeah, I'm still yes. So there was a question regarding trauma and how I was bullied and and and and the consequences. Yeah. And my guess bullying is very, very, very difficult to to to really to really experience. What helps me recover is one time. Time is one method. One method. I am at because time does sort of sand the rough edges. But also one thing to help with is connecting with other, you know, people and and connecting with people who are a part of, you know, who share similar experiences and really really, you know, connect with people that that, you know, our our our friends to and also with people who who are of like mind. Those are help. Those are those are also very helpful. But another thing is time and and having different experiences. And I was I so was looking forward to no longer being a daycare person, a daycare student. Yeah, that was liberating. Thank you for being able to share that with us, Cole. Yeah. So I guess we want to, you know, again, kind of be conscious of time here. Again, if anyone within the group has any questions, we certainly like our our guests to be able to to answer them. We'll leave them a couple minutes with some closing thoughts too, if they want. Also, I'm going to go ahead. Val has shared her email address earlier. I'm going to go ahead and share mine. We are looking for opportunities to provide resources for those leading internships. And so we're finding lots of great suggestions from people. And so if you have any resources that you think would be a benefit or maybe some stories about things that that were helpful for you, you know, please, please be willing to be, you know, please email us. And we can try to put those resources together, because I don't know about some of the rest of you who are running programs, but I know mine starts in in 20 days. So I'm certainly trying to get everything ready. Val, you have your hand up. Yeah, I wondered if any of you have suggestions about when when you're running a Zoom or, you know, Google Meet workshop, for example, or class, and, you know, I'm guessing that for some people going into breakout groups, you know, those with anxiety and and some of the other kinds of examples that we've heard that is not is not a pleasant experience. And, you know, people need to be warned about it, that kind of thing. But I'm just wondering if people have ideas about how to do that to help be inclusive and not force people into uncomfortable situations. One idea being having a group that is a non participating group like camera off and Mike off. So, Val, I saw your question in the chat and I was going to come to that. The idea of the quiet Zoom room. That's helpful. I in my in person classes often tell students that here's a group interaction that we're going to or an activity that we're going to do in groups. But if you choose not to work with someone else and you want to do it on your own, feel free to do so. And then at the end we'll all come together and share our responses or feedback. And I encourage the same thing in Zoom rooms or, you know, virtual meetings as well. Like if you don't want to join a room, you can work on it on your own and you can come back and and share. I also allow the flexibility to I know a lot of my colleagues do not prefer when the webcams are turned off. They want all the students and mentees faces all the time up there. That's very challenging, even for me. And so I don't, you know, I use that flexibility as well. Also responding to one thing that I that I wanted to share in some of the like the methods to assess slide at the very end was thinking about creative ways to do the final presentations or posters or research papers, things like that. If it can be a blog article or can it be a recorded podcast episode where the mentor and the mentee can have an interaction about what they learned or the findings of the project or something like that. It can be like a short five minute YouTube video. That could be what is disseminated. So, so science dissemination, I know, you know, we have traditionally used conference presentations and posters and manuscripts and papers, but we can think about other ways to do it. I've had students create like some of my students like graphic design, even though their major is not on designing like web based designing and stuff like that. They love designing flyers and things like that. So, if there's a way to like represent your your project findings in a visual poster as opposed to a poster that's based on words, that's one way to evaluate outcome. And like I was saying, you know, any other technology based modalities like like blogging, blogging, videos, things like that. But but answering your YouTube your zoom question. Yeah, allowing that flexibility is helpful. Excellent. Any final questions from anyone in the group here? All right. It's 228. Do or any of our speakers have any final comments they'd like to make? First of all, I'd like to thank you all for this presentation. I'm glad to have participated. And I look forward to further ways to participate. And also, yeah, with respect to you, you met and see if I mentioned something about breakout rooms. I see about our Valerie but it's 130 and my brain is about ready to go. But but and talked about virtual breakout rooms, or quiet rooms. That's good. And it would be also good to set aside or find an actual room someplace to on campus or to also serve as something like that. I just I remember I recall my times as a PhD students at Carleton University. And I recall, you know, spending a lot of my energy during the daytime doing my work in a very high definition manner, very detailed thinking. But then when four or five p.m. came around, and I was, you know, out of spoons, I regularly went to the Centers for Students with Disabilities, and I, which was a club, if you will, run by the student, the student government, they had a room there. And I just sat down on a recliner with a blanket and slept. And I did that pretty much three or four times a week. And that's what got me through. That's a great idea. Thank you. All right. If if there are no more further comments, we want to thank everyone for thank our guests. Shiva and Cole and Akila for presenting today. We want to thank all of you who took time out of your day to educate yourself and learn more about this important topic so we can make our summer experience is great for our for our students. And again, we've given email addresses if you have any further questions you prefer to ask offline. And so we look forward to maybe meeting again in the future, Val, and others to kind of continue this conversation. Because I think as we go through and learn more, we're going to have more and more questions and more opportunities and needs to have talks like this. So thank you so much, everyone. And have a great rest of your day. All right, well, Frank.