Announcing the Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund Grants in Disability Studies, and Dennis Lang Student Awards for 2018:

Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund recipients:

Faculty/Staff

  • Clara Berridge and Anjulie Ganti, School of Social Work 
  • Sharan Brown, College of Education                        
  • Stephen Meyers and Megan McCloskey, Department of Law, Societies and Justice     
  • Heather Evans, Department of Sociology; Disability Studies Program; Department of Law, Societies and Justice
  • ET Russian, University of Washington Medical Center, Rehab Therapy Department

Students

  • Ian Johnson, School of Social Work          
  • Cynthia Bennett, Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering
  • Denise Grollmus, Department of English

Dennis Lang Student Award recipients:

  • K Wheeler, 2018 Disability Studies Major; Law, Societies & Justice Major

  • Cynthia Bennett, Ph.D. Candidate, Human Centered Design & Engineering

K Wheeler

K exemplifies the type of engaged DS student and public citizen that the Dennis Lang award was created to recognize. They will be graduating with the Individualized Studies Major in Disability Studies and the Major in Law, Societies and Justice in Spring 2018. Disability Studies faculty have noted that K is always one of the top two or three most active participants in discussion and their contributions productively challenge instructors, classmates, and texts. Their LSJ thesis explores the topic of rape in the 2nddegree in Washington State. Our state law provides a marital shield protecting the spouses of persons with intellectual disabilities from prosecution for rape (this used to be common, but now WA is one of the few states that has not redressed it). They are also building off of this research for their Disability Studies capstone project, which is to go beyond analysis of the law and develop tools for advocacy. K served as a TA for an Honors class in disability studies two years ago. Beyond scholarship, K is well known as an active campus citizen at the D Center, the Student Disability Commission, and even the Harry Potter Club. They have worked throughout their undergrad career for DO-IT as an office assistant for projects to increase the representation of students with disabilities in STEM fields.

Cynthia Bennett

Cynthia has been extraordinarily active in the disability studies community during her career as a graduate student. She is a PhD candidate in Human Centered Design and Engineering, working on a thesis titled Toward Disability-Informed Human-Centered Design. Cynthia is an outstanding scholar with many publications and is a major contributor to the accessibility research programs at UW. She co-coordinated a 2-credit reading group that explored the intersections of disability studies and science and technology studies (Fall 2017), and then made a year-long service commitment to spearheading the 2017-2018 Graduate Student Interest Group in Disability Studies, with funding she secured from the Simpson Center for the Humanities. Cynthia has also been a regular participant in D Center programming and community, is known for her activism on accessibility issues at UW and in Seattle, and has generally made an impact by facilitating connections, mentoring, and other resources among students and faculty interested in DS research and disability issues. Cynthia is known as a leader and activist nationally. She has mentored National Federation of the Blind scholarship holders and she served a 5-year term on the Board of Trustees of the Washington State School for the Blind. You can visit her website here. URL https://www.bennettc.com