BY KERI L. RODGERS

I am reaching out to share a career development opportunity for doctoral candidates or alumni who have disabilities as well as a service opportunity for faculty members interested in supporting early career scholars with disabilities. Please share this information with anyone who might be interested.

Pre-Conference Seminar for Early Career Scholars with Disabilities/Disabled Scholars: The American Educational Research Association and the Spencer Foundation are sponsoring a Pre-Conference Seminar for Early Career Scholars with Disabilities/Disabled Scholars to be held in Toronto before the AERA annual meeting. This initiative targets promising doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars with disabilities seeking to pursue tenure-track faculty positions to increase the diversity of the professoriate in all research areas represented within the AERA membership. Selected participants will participate in eight hours of programming specifically designed to address the unique challenges faced by disabled scholars seeking to enter the professoriate. All activities during the pre-conference seminar incorporate principles of universal design to ensure accessibility for all participants. Applications received by the priority deadline of February 11, 2019 will be given full consideration.

Faculty Virtual Mentoring Opportunity: The program includes a virtual mentoring component pairing seminar participants with a faculty member or administrator who can commit to virtually meeting with their mentee twice during the three-month period following the seminar. Our hope is that mentors will provide general feedback as participants create and/or revise an application portfolio with the common pieces needed when applying for a faculty position in addition to discussing common questions that may be asked during an interview. Current and emeriti faculty with and without disabilities are welcome to participate in the virtual mentoring aspect of the program. We hope enough faculty members are interested in serving as virtual mentors to pair each disabled scholar with their own mentor.

The Call for Virtual Mentors for faculty members and the Call for Applications for early career scholars provide an in-depth description about each program component. AERA has created a “landing page” introducing both programs on the 2019 Annual Meeting microsite.

I am co-chairing this initiative with Federico Waitoller from University of Illinois at Chicago, and I am happy to discuss it with anyone who may be interested.

Keri L. Rodgers
klrodgers@bsu.edu

Guest blogger Keri L. Rodgers is the AERA Division B Communications Director and a Ph.D. Candidate in Educational Studies—Curriculum at Ball State University