 Dewitt Scholar Profile, Randy. My name's Cheryl Burgstahler and I'm the Director of Accessible Technology Services here at the University of Washington. And part of my role is to direct the Dewitt Center, where Dewitt stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internet Working, and Technology. The first program we funded, started in 1992, is called the Dewitt Scholars Program. The Dewitt Scholars Program is where we work with teams with disabilities to get them ready for college and careers. Randy was in our first group of Dewitt Scholars, and now he's an adult and moved on, but he's still engaged in the program. He's still giving back to the Dewitt Scholars Program by mentoring younger people, but also sharing with the world how to make this place a more accessible place. I'm Randy Hammer. I was one of the first Dewitt Scholars. I started with Dewitt in 1993. We were one of the first summer programs. I believe there were 16 of us that came to the University of Washington. We spent two weeks on campus, living in the dorms, and experiencing different types of science, technology, engineering. All of us had disabilities. I, for example, am completely blind. Both of my eyes are prosthetics. Other folks that were in the group, we had some that were hearing impaired. We had some with mobility impairments. A very good friend of mine has cerebral palsy. I specifically remember the Saturday night that we were up here, and we all sat in the common room of the dorm. We had TV going. We were all just being kids, all being teens, and we were existing with each other in the way that all teens normally do. Looking back at it now, very special, even though at the time it was just another night. But thinking about the context of that night now with my perspective, it's actually a very special memory. I'm glad I brought that one up. I learned what college life is like, and most importantly, I learned that the early bird catches the shower. It's a good program because it teaches you a lot about science and math and engineering. I learned a lot about engineering, both from the labs we did and just from the professors and teachers that were brought in. Through Duet, I found an internship at Warehouser. Warehouser is a forestry company, and through that internship I got on with their IT department. I had already started to think about computers as my eventual career, and so this kind of meshed very well for me. I worked through that internship and not only came out of that internship with a permanent position at Warehouser, but ultimately became a senior member of the team that I was on, was promoted multiple times, and it was all due to the fact that I got my foot in the door, and Duet got that for me. 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, but it also has allowed me to be a functional mentor for existing or new Duet scholars, the ones that are coming into the program now. The only way to become a leader is to observe other leaders in the field, and sometimes those leaders are successful and you learn from how they do it successfully. Being a leader is so key to what I do today that it's difficult for me to break that down, but if I go back in my own history and think about the things that I have done in my life, all of that rolls back to the idea of how do I take the people that are around me and through my own actions make them better, and that really is the idea of mentorship, and that's what Duet does. We started the Duet program with funding from the National Science Foundation, and now it's grown to a collection of activities that are sponsored by many groups, including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the State of Washington, Microsoft, Boeing, many other funders. All of our projects are centered around increasing the success of people with disabilities in college and careers using technology as an empowering tool. For more resources about supporting students with disabilities, consult uw.edu-d-o-i-t. This video is funded by Accessible Technology Services of UW-I-T. Copyright 2021, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy this material for non-commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged.