Making Education and Careers in Chemistry Accessible and

Chapter 11

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Making Education and Careers in Chemistry Accessible and Successful for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students Todd Pagano* Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, New York 14623 *E-mail: [email protected]

Diversifying science fields with qualified underrepresented individuals, including individuals with disabilities and Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D/HH) professionals, should be a goal of any organization. The Laboratory Science Technology (LST) program at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf produces graduates with strong foundations in applied science, hands-on laboratory applications, and “soft skills” necessary for competitive employment as laboratory scientists. The program has achieved success through outreach, building industrial partnerships, curricular advancements, and student involvement in undergraduate research. Historically, D/HH students have lagged behind hearing peers in persistence rates to obtaining post-secondary degrees—potentially leading to lower employment rates in science fields. This chapter discusses the need for skilled D/HH professionals in the field, how the LST program has worked to narrow graduation and employment gaps, and practices for making chemistry curricula accessible in order to increase student success. It is hoped that it will also generate a renewed interest in broadening participation of D/HH individuals in the field.

© 2017 American Chemical Society Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


Diversity and the Need To Stay Competitive There is a need to diversify the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) enterprise in the United States. Skilled individuals with disabilities, including qualified Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D/HH) professionals, who are trained in STEM fields represent an important resource for keeping the United States competitive in the changing global economy. Often when D/HH students (or many underrepresented students, for that matter) choose STEM educational programs, their record of persistence to graduation is not on par with their hearing peers. So, even if we are able to recruit these students into the “STEM pipeline”, many are leaving the field—essentially creating a “leaky pipeline”. The Laboratory Science Technology (LST) Program at Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester, New York is diligently working to recruit and retain D/HH students in technical fields, and specifically in chemistry—ultimately working toward filling the need for valued and diverse STEM professionals. This chapter will discuss the need for diversity in the field, some of the strategies that the LST program uses to make education in the laboratory sciences accessible and successful for D/HH students, and how the program is doing its part in meeting the needs for D/HH scientists in the profession. According to the National Science Board report, in 2010 students in China earned nearly a quarter of the over 5.5 million first degrees awarded worldwide in science and engineering, while students in the United States were awarded approximately one-tenth of the total degrees in these fields (1). In the United States, approximately one-third of all bachelor’s degrees earned were in science and engineering fields, while in China, about half of all bachelor’s degrees earned were in science and engineering (1). Whereas several countries saw the number of science and engineering degrees approximately double between the years 2000 and 2010, the increase in the United States during that same time was more modest (1). Some of the discrepancies in worldwide STEM degree attainment might be attributed to the cultural or perceived value of various professional fields, economic environment, or educational requirements in different countries. The relatively lower number of higher education graduates in STEM fields is a concern in the United States, and if we want to stay competitive in the global market, we may need to do something about the number STEM degrees that we award (2). There is a further concern related to diversity of those working in STEM fields in the United States, where according to the 2010 U.S. census, it is apparent that the vast majority of science and engineering job-holders are not from traditionally underrepresented groups (1).

Education and Career Gaps for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students Though the argument for categorically increasing diversity among all groups can be readily made, the need for more professionals with disabilities, and specifically D/HH scientists, is the focus of this chapter. And in order to have more D/HH working professionals, more students need to complete 126 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


post-secondary degrees in STEM fields. Unfortunately, D/HH students have historically been on the “wrong side” of degree and career attainment achievement gaps. Though a thorough investigation of more current data is needed, it was estimated that approximately 160,000 D/HH students were enrolled in United States postsecondary schools (3). Unfortunately, D/HH students had less than half the six-year persistence rate in obtaining a baccalaureate degree compared to their hearing peers and just over half the persistence rate in completing associate degrees (3). These statistics are not specifically for individuals in STEM fields, but the dichotomy is likely even magnified when only science fields are considered. Eighty percent of hearing individuals between the ages of 25 and 64 were in the labor force compared to only 59% of D/HH individuals (3). Hearing employees in STEM fields earned approximately 22% more than D/HH employees, perhaps related to the fact that about 60% of the D/HH individuals lack the college degrees that might assist them in obtaining higher paying jobs (3). Further, D/HH working professionals are less likely than their hearing peers to earn promotions and experience professional advancement throughout their careers (4, 5).

Part of the Solution: The Laboratory Science Technology Program The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) is located on the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). RIT enrolls more than 15,400 undergraduate and 3,200 graduate students and offers degrees form the associate to doctoral level. NTID is one of nine colleges of RIT and enrolls more than 1,200 D/HH students, primarily offering associate degree programs, like the LST program, as well as a bachelor’s degree in American Sign Language-English interpretation and master’s degrees in secondary education and health care interpreting. Another function of NTID is to support D/HH students who are enrolled in any of the other nine colleges of RIT. To this end, NTID provides sign language interpreting, discipline-based tutoring, and note-taking for students who are continuing in baccalaureate and graduate programs. LST is a Chemical Technology program (though it has a strand focused on biology) that prepares graduates to work as laboratory technicians or to continue their education in obtaining higher degrees. In 2015 there were nearly 100,000 jobs in the United States for chemists/material scientists (6) and 66,500 for chemical technicians (7). The Occupational Outlook Handbook produced by the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics states that providing students with “laboratory time”, and specifically “laboratory course work provides students with hands on experience in conducting experiments and using various instruments and techniques properly”, is among the most important functions of a Chemical Technology program (7). The LST program really took this advice to heart when the program was being built because we wanted to give our D/HH students every competitive advantage they can have in the job market (8). Inasmuch as they will likely face some communication and attitudinal barriers, we want to give them all the technical skills that we can to help them prosper in the 127 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


workplace. Incidentally, Occupational Outlook Handbook also recommends that students participate in cooperative (co-op) work experiences (7)—which is also an important component of the LST program. We work with government agencies and industry to assure that the program’s offering is really what is desired in the workplace and is ultimately going to help the D/HH LST program graduates obtain meaningful careers. By assessing market needs for laboratory technicians, NTID set out to remedy the stated gaps in education and career obtainment for D/HH individuals and built the LST program with an industry perspective. Our records show that the LST program has produced over a hundred graduates and 98% have obtained jobs or are currently continuing their education. About 80% of the students who enroll in the program persist to graduation or continue in baccalaureate degree programs (exceeding the national persistence rated of even hearing peers). Through this effort NTID has created a premier program for students with disabilities, and through the fruits of that program and a growing professional network, more D/HH individuals have been placed into science careers. Because of these initiatives, the group of LST students and graduates now sits squarely on the “good side” of education and employment attainment achievement gaps. Co-op/internship and employment placements of our students and graduates include government, industry, and academic host organizations. The completion of a co-op is a graduation requirement of the LST program. These co-ops are essential for preparing the students for future work experience, expanding their view of science, and providing a setting for students to apply skills developed in the teaching classroom and laboratory. The students who complete the co-ops tend to demonstrate great pride in their accomplishments, as well as observable personal and academic growth. Over the past six years, supervisors of LST co-op students have rated students very favorably (average rating of 4.7 on a 5.0 scale) on overall satisfaction with the intern and the placement experience (again, exceeding the ratings of many of their hearing peers on campus). When the LST program was first established, the enrollment predominantly consisted of students working to complete associate degrees. These students found success in finding employment as laboratory technicians and performed very well in their occupations. More recently, however, the program has become very popular among students, resulting in a greater number of student applications to the program, and ultimately creating a more competitive program. With a stronger enrollment filled with entering students with better academic preparation, more students began to continue their education in baccalaureate degree programs. This created an interesting shift in the program—where our initial strength as a direct-to-work focused program had to also function as a bridge to assist recent high school graduates to succeed in baccalaureate (and higher) degree programs in chemistry, biology, biotechnology, environmental science, and biomedical sciences. Maintaining the balancing act of being both a successful occupation-focused two-year degree program and a traditional transfer degree program is one of the current challenges to the LST program. By way of a brief snapshot of our LST students, currently the vast majority of program graduates continue in baccalaureate degrees and two-thirds of the program’s enrollment has been historically comprised of female students. As it relates to 128 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

diversifying the field, we are additionally proud of the number of D/HH female STEM graduates that the program has produced. Even though the program is still relatively young, some of our former graduates have recently begun to complete master’s and Ph.D. degrees.


Mechanisms for Program Success The LST program has experienced a lot of success and is well-situated to sustain its ability to serve its D/HH students. As stated, the program’s relationship with industrial partners is important to its overall success. We seek continual feedback from our industrial partners and use them as sounding boards to assess our curriculum (in the past, we have even completed formal gap analyses to gauge differences in what we perceive to be the important skills in the workplace compared to what industry expects of new hires). We are interested in knowing the skills that industry values in their laboratory professionals—both in technical and “soft skills” (9). Through this feedback and constant reflection, the program is continually adapting to satisfy industry’s needs. If the LST program is going to make claims that we are listening to the advice of industry and producing qualified members of the workforce, then we need to make concerted efforts to remain in communication with our industrial partners. Our industrial partners have also been kind in donating equipment to the program and in hosting our students on co-ops and eventual permanent hires. In additional to numerous industrial visitors, five former presidents of the American Chemical Society (ACS) have visited NTID and the LST program. In fact, one former ACS president, Dr. Katie Hunt, was appointed to the NTID National Advisory Group by the Secretary of the Department of Education. Dr. Hunt was also instrumental in building a strong relationship between Dow Chemical and NTID (10). The LST program also has a unique curriculum that is tailored to the academic preparation, talents, and learning styles of our students. The curriculum is heavy in hands-on, applied learning experiences with multiple opportunities to use our well-stocked and cutting-edge instrumentation laboratory. Presently, improving students’ writing skills is an important goal across the post-secondary spectrum, but often even more so a focus when working with D/HH students. Program faculty place focused effort on improving the students’ writing abilities while also enforcing science and mathematics skills. In the field of chemistry, it is sometimes assumed that math competencies are stronger indicators of student success than verbal, reading, or writing skills. However, we believe that reading/writing abilities can be at least as valuable in predicting the successful learning of chemistry, and in fact, the reading/writing skills might even be stronger predictors of student success among D/HH learners. In the LST program, we feel that writing can be used in the science classroom and science can be used in the English classroom to improve the learning of both science and reading/writing for D/HH students. And while we generally believe science is best learned through experience, we have shown that writing facilitates student learning in science, the processing of the experiences, and making meaning out of the science. We strive 129 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


to include frequent writing assignments that match the cognitive task at hand in the classroom and academic laboratory. Undergraduate research is a current and strategic emphasis of many post-secondary institutes. The benefits of student involvement in undergraduate research are plentiful and discussed in the article by Pagano et al. (11). The LST program’s advisory board has more recently been emphasizing the need for graduates who have critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and other “soft skills”—and the program is uniformly addressing these issues. Undergraduate research can be an effective vehicle for enforcing many of these skills that employers seek in new hires. In many ways, our undergraduate research program is like any other—sharing the same goals and general structure. However, ours is unique in that it engages D/HH students, and specifically those at the associate degree level. It is fairly obvious that two of the most significant challenges in involving associate degree level students in high-level, real-world research is that the students likely have not yet taken some of the upper-level courses that provide information that can be crucial to the research project and also that student turnover is rapid (as students generally complete the associate degree in two to three years). One strategy that can overcome these challenges is to modify the research experiments to increase the probability of success for these students. This is not to say that the research needs to be “watered-down”, but the projects can be broken up into digestible portions with definite checkpoints (12). Group meetings can be effective venues for student researchers to understand how their project portion relates to the overall initiatives (and bigger picture) of the research group (12). Our undergraduate researchers are valuable contributors in every aspect of the research from the design of the research, to conducting the experimentation, collecting data, and completing the cycle by disseminating the results. We believe that this experience for our D/HH students in the LST program provides them with a competitive advantage in the job market. Our students have travelled the country to present the fruits of their research and have been co-authors on peer-reviewed articles in the field. Supervisors who might be considering hiring a D/HH student researcher or laboratory employee, but have not had experience doing so in the past, often have questions about laboratory safety. We believe that safety concerns are generally not the real barrier to the success of D/HH scientist, but in fact, attitudinal (even if founded in naïveté) barriers, or just a lack of familiarity with working with D/HH individuals, generally represent the largest hesitation (13). The article by Smith et al. (13) does, however, offer some relatively simple, implementable safety and best practices for working with D/HH individuals in the academic or professional laboratory.

Conclusion At first glance, the LST program appears to be a typical, high-standard science program similar to any other, but in fact, it is a one-of-kind Chemical Technology program specifically for D/HH students (8). The LST program assessed the demand for well-trained scientists and technicians, established 130 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 2: Perspectives and Exemplary Programs ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


strong relationships with industry, and developed a unique curriculum. Program graduates are well-trained, with superb bench skills and an understanding of working as a valued member of a team. Their overall persistence and employment rates exceed those of the national averages of their hearing peers. The involvement of LST students in undergraduate research is a strong mechanism for enforcing skills that are logistically prohibitive to fully address in the traditional classroom, and helps students to become encultured to the field while supporting their growth in self-confidence. The program is poised to build on its successes, remains in dialogue with industrial partners, and is addressing the fluxes in employment trends in order to assure that we can continue to provide a critical mass of qualified D/HH scientists to the field. We believe that employers, co-op supervisors, and faculty research advisors have discovered that hiring D/HH students (or graduates) with a strong chemistry skillset, like those from the LST program at NTID, makes good business sense (13). These valued scientists and technicians are often able to enter the laboratory and immediately contribute to the host organizations’ productivity. They work safely and contribute to the diversity of the laboratory setting. It is advantageous when people from diverse backgrounds come together and tackle problem-solving through their different perspectives and unique ways to circumvent challenges and barriers.

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National Science Board. Science and Engineering Indicators; NSB 14-01; National Science Foundation: Arlington, VA, 2014. Jones, M. T.; Barlow, A. E.; Villarejo, M. J. Higher Educ. 2010, 81, 82–115. Walter, G. C. D/HH Students in Transition: Demographics with an Emphasis on STEM Education; Executive Summary; NTID/RIT: Rochester, NY, 2010. Kelly, R. R.; Quagliata, A. B.; DeMartino, R.; Perotti, V. 21st Century Deaf Workers: Going Beyond Just Employed to Career Growth and Entrepreneurship. In Diversity in Deaf Education; Marshark, M., Lampropoulou, V., Skordilis, E. K., Eds.; Oxford University Press: New York, NY, 2016; pp 473–505. Kelly, R. R.; Quagliata, A. B.; DeMartino, R.; Perotti, V. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress on Education of the Deaf; Athens, Greece, July 6−9, 2015. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-17 Edition, Chemists and Materials Scientists. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/chemists-andmaterials-scientists.htm (accessed September 14, 2016). Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-17 Edition, Chemical Technicians. http://www.bls.gov/ ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/chemical-technicians.htm (accessed September 14, 2016). Pagano, T.; Ross, A. D.; O’Neill, G. J. J. Sci. Educ. Stud. Disabil. 2012, 15, 11–25. Ross, A. D.; Pagano, T. J. Sci. Educ. Stud. Disabil. 2009, 13, 17–28. 131

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10. Hu, J. Two Deaf Interns at Dow Offering a New Perspective. Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 7, 2011. 11. Pagano, T.; Ross, A. D.; Smith, S. B. Educ. Sci. 2015, 5, 146–165. 12. Pagano, T. Conducting Research with Early Undergraduates and Students with Special Needs. In Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Research: Fostering Excellence and Enhancing the Impact; Boyd, M. K., Wesemann, J. L., Eds.; Council on Undergraduate Research: Washington, DC, 2009; pp 211−214. 13. Smith, S. B.; Ross, A. D.; Pagano, T. J. Chem. Health Saf. 2016, 23, 24–31.

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Making Education and Careers in Chemistry Accessible and

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