Catherine Kudlick, Ph.D. in history, is the director of Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability and Professor of History at San Francisco State University. She was invited to AIChE's 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco to take part in a panel discussion entitled the "Disability Unity Convocation" and also had a chance to sit down with past AIChE president Bill Byers to talk about her experiences as a person with vision impairment and give recommendations on how professional societies can be more inclusive of people with disabilities.
In her video interview, she talks about how, at first, she was in denial of her disability but then embraced it and utilized it to solve problems and look at information differently than others.
"I've devoted my life to pushing thinking around disability as a creative, ingenious, interesting force."
When asked how to make professional societies more accessible to people with disabilities, Catherine suggested integrating disability throughout an organization's offerings, including making conferences friendlier to people with disabilities.
Bill and Catherine also talked about how people without disabilities can better interact with those who have disabilities.
You can watch the interview in the panel above.
The Disability Unity Convocation launched as part of the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting. It was created to help raise awareness of the needs of disabled chemical engineers and others in related industries, as well as to highlight the contributions these individuals can make to industry and academia.
The Disability Unity Convocation is made possible by the AIChE's Foundation's Doing a World of Good Campaign.
To learn more about it, click here.