Not long after she came to 成人头条 University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine (WMed) in 2022 as the director of Student Life and Well-Being, Alex Carlson, MA, was chosen to lead efforts around student accommodations and ensuring that standards are in place to make the medical school鈥檚 curriculum accessible to students with disabilities.
Since that time, she has taken part in trainings with the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) and the Docs with Disabilities Initiative (DWDI) as part of her goal of building an open an honest culture at the medical school around disabilities and accommodations.
Now, Carlson is one of 14 individuals who were recently selected to participate in the DWDI 2025-2026 Disability Resource Professional (DRP) Academy. Now in its third year, the academy is a highly focused hybrid professional development experience for disability resource professionals who are seeking expertise in access in medical education.
The academy officially kicked off June 12 and goes through January 2027.
鈥淚t was very exciting to be chosen,鈥 Carlson said. 鈥淚 think this will be really good for WMed. We鈥檝e grown in terms of the accommodations we are able to put in place and the accessibility we provide for our students so they can access the curriculum with the accommodations they need. Having that network of other professionals and seeing the challenges other institutions are facing will be helpful as we continue to put new accommodations in place to meet students where they are.鈥
During the 20-month program, Carlson and the other 13 participants will engage in synchronous online learning sessions, culminating in an intensive on-site workshop at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
From now through February, the cohort will take part in the professional development stage of the academy and then be paired with a mentor as they complete different weekly training modules. The group will head to UCLA in February for the weeklong on-site workshop and then take part in monthly mentoring sessions through January 2027.
Carlson said the component of the academy she is most excited about involves examining different case studies around accommodating students with disabilities in medical education programs.
鈥淚 think we as an institution will learn a lot through this and find some things that could be done differently. We do a lot of things well now and we鈥檝e grown a lot. I want to continue to build an open and honest culture around disabilities and accommodations for our students and WMed.鈥
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