2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Despite efforts to improve DEI on college campuses, bias and discrimination still exist in higher education settings, particularly for disabled students, who are often forgotten or less emphasized in DEI efforts. In some disciplinary areas, such as in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, disabled students are more likely to experience discrimination due to a reportedly more competitive and less flexible and supportive environment. Academic librarians and other educators can make a difference for these students by contributing to a more inclusive campus environment for disabled people in STEM by implementing universally accessible and inclusive pedagogy, resources, services, and spaces. Such efforts are more effective when they incorporate a disability justice perspective, which provides an intersectional framework to understand how individuals experience disability. This paper will present a disability justice-informed perspective in hopes of allowing librarians who work with disabled STEM student to gain a more nuanced understanding of ableism and the many barriers disabled people encounter in STEM fields as well as more broadly in higher education.