Cawthon Awarded $5 Million Grant; Establishes National Center to Improve Outcomes for Disabled Students
Millions of disabled students have such a different experience of college that it threatens their lifelong success — a crisis Dr. Stephanie W. Cawthon seeks to address by establishing a new national research center with a potentially far-reaching impact on students, researchers, and educators.
Cawthon has launched the National Disability Center for Student Success with a $5 million federal grant awarded by the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education focused on rigorous research.
The National Disability Center’s mission: Provide the first actionable research foundation to support disabled student experiences and achievement after high school.
“My career is devoted to empowering disabled students to thrive in classrooms and succeed in life,” said Cawthon. “With the formation of the National Disability Center, we can lead a disabled-centered effort to address the gaps in research and practices.”
The new center is housed at the Texas Center for Equity Promotion at The University of Texas at Austin, where Cawthon, who is deaf, is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology with a courtesy appointment in Special Education.
Cawthon’s award is the second-largest IES grant in UT Austin’s history. Her research has been funded by over $50 million in federal and other grants.
About the Disabled Student Experience
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that up to 1 in 4 (or 27 percent) of adults have at least one type of disability.
That means over 4 million college students in the U.S. have a disability — including apparent disabilities, such as a person using crutches, and ones that are non-apparent, such as autism or depression — and studies show they face barriers that make them less likely to persist in their studies, graduate with degrees, and achieve their career goals.
Studies also show disabled students find colleges and universities to be unwelcoming and unaccommodating places. They report encountering high levels of ableism, discrimination, and bullying, and these experiences are one of the key reasons they do not disclose their disabilities — making it harder for higher education to understand the true scope of the issue and provide the necessary support.
A Collaborative Research Model
The National Disability Center uses a collaborative, student-centered, asset-based approach to promote a greater understanding of disabled people’s experiences and obstacles. It is an innovative model focused on access and equity successfully piloted by Cawthon in 2022 and can be replicated on campuses nationwide.
The center’s interdisciplinary leadership team, student fellows, and faculty cadre are people with disabilities or people deeply connected with the disability community.
Cawthon is the National Disability Center’s Executive Director and is the principal investigator of the grant. She is joined on the center’s leadership team by co-principal investigator Andrew Dillon from the School of Information, who is Director of Research Dissemination, and co-principal investigator Greg Roberts from the Meadows Center for Educational Risk, who is the center’s Director of Evaluation.
The first research priority for the National Disability Center is to create a new measurement of perceived campus accessibility — an essential step to help determine demographic predictors and the relationship to disabled student outcomes — by focusing on the core issues of accessibility, disclosure, student supports, institutional culture, and student outcomes.
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