The DO-IT Team

The DO-IT Team
 

Grant-Funded Projects

In 2022, DO-IT published DO-IT Retrospective: Our First 30 Years. Throughout the year, DO-IT staff worked on many projects funded by the NSF. Ongoing NSF projects included AccessComputing, AccessCSforAll, AccessADVANCE, Creating and Testing Data Science Learning Tools for Secondary Students with Disabilities, Neuroscience for Neurodiverse Learners, and two subawards: The Alliance for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Computing Education and The Alliance of Persons with Disabilities and Intersectionality for Inclusion, Networking, and Transition Opportunities in STEM. DO-IT also finalized the AccessCSforAll2.0, Access to Informal STEM Learning and AccessINCLUDES grants. DO-IT received funding for a subaward from the University of Minnesota in 2022. Staff also managed DO-IT’s state-funded Scholars program as well as maintained resources, activities, and collaborations related to legacy projects. 

50+ Internships

DO-IT participants engaged in over 50 internships with a majority being paid internships in STEM fields. Locations included Nike, Northrup Gruman, Microsoft, Intel Labs, Comcast, Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Nordstrom, the Argonne National Laboratory, the Children’s National Medical Center, and several universities. Through internships, students build their professional networks, learn about career fields, improve strategies for requesting job accommodations, apply academic learning to real-world environments, and access state-of-the-art equipment.

1000+ Participants

DO-IT serves over 1,000 students with disabilities in our programs. Activities in 2022 included workshops, networking events, mentoring, disability advocacy events, and five weeks of online and on-site college-preparation summer programs. Through these activities, students build job seeking skills, improve their resumes, learn how to be successful in college, gain access to assistive technology, and much more.  

[Text featured: DO-IT’s Reach Since 1993: More than 600 DO-IT Scholars and Ambassadors from 258 high schools in Washington and 29 states across the US; 66 institutional partners, 23 organizational partners, and 11 industry partners serving over 300 AccessComputing students nationwide; Leadership activities in national alliances, such as the Alliance for Identity Inclusive Computing Education and the STEM Alliance; and DO-IT Center hosted in Japan, DO-IT partnerships in Malaysia and South Korea.]

Participant Spotlights

Kelly Mack, University of Washington

Kelly Mack, a Ph.D. student at the UW Allen School, works with researchers to take accessibility and disability into account in their research methods and design processes. She has carried this accessibility mindset into her work with industry work with Snap Inc. and Girls Who Code. Mack’s dissertation will focus on building technology that supports people with disabilities who have fluctuating access needs and disability identities, and she recently received the 2022 Dorothy L. Simpson Leadership Award. “AccessComputing has been awesome because you have a shared community of fellow disabled students in STEM who are going through similar things” said Kelly, who joined AccessComputing in the spring of 2019. “Having a community to go to for support and advice is invaluable.”

Allegra Keys, University of Washington

Allegra Keys is a DO-IT Scholar from 2009, poet, and author. Keys attended University of Washington for a year before taking a haitus to focus on her writing and other aspects of life. DO-IT taught her to self advocate for herself and speak up for those with disabilities, which she does in her ongoing blog. In 2019, she returned to the University of Washington and in June 2023, Allegra will graduate from UW Seattle with an English degree in creative writing with departmental honors. She hopes to be accepted into the UW Master of Fine Arts program focused on poetry. Her poetry has been featured in multiple collections, and she published her first book, Knotted Strings, in 2013. Through her writing she aspires to make narrative spaces for people with disabilities.

    DO-IT 2022 Highlights

DO-IT successfully ran two summer studies, DO-IT Scholars and Neuroscience for Neurodiverse Learners.			AccessComputing Co-PI Stacy Branham gave the keynote at Tapia, which was well-received and has been shared widely online.
DO-IT developed and delivered a training program to promote hiring people with disabilities in the Yakima Valley; many employers received the training, included the City of Yakima and Yakima County.			AccessADVANCE, AccessComputing, and the NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM Alliance each submitted a video to the STEM for All video showcase.