Listen to Show 48

Delta Alpha Pi is the first and only (that we know of!) National Academic Honor Society for students with disabilities. In this podcast, Edith Miller, Founder of Delta Aplha Pi, explains the benefits of this honor society and how to establish a chapter at your school.

For more details and information, contact Edith Miller at candemiller@msn.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS

Beth Case: Disability 411 Show #48

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Beth: Hello and welcome to the Disability 411 podcast. I’m your host, Beth Case.

Now before we get to today’s interview, I want to remind you all about the Disability 411 blog. You can find that at Disabilty411.blogspot,com. Now the reason I’m bringing thatup is since the show is not coming out as frequently as it used to sometimes I will getinformation that I want to share with you and I don’t want to wait until the next podcast. So I post about it on the blog. Be sure and stop by there and check it out now and then. Again, it’s Disability411.blogspot.com.

Now if you all will excuse me getting all mushy for a minute, as of the recording of thispodcast, I have been podcasting Disability 411 for two years. That is a really long timein the world of poscasting. I just want to thank you all for being loyal listeners, for youremails and your phone calls and your support as I put this podcast together. I know I’ve said this several times before, but about every time I decide that “oh, I’m just talking to empty air. Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares about this podcast.” I’ll get an email from someone saying how much they enjoy it and how much it means to them and I can’t tell you how much those emails mean to me. Every time I get one of those I pick up themike and I get right back into it and the show keeps going. So, thank you for a verywonderful and successful two years.

The podcast isn’t going anywhere. I’m going to keep doing it. It is slowing down in frequency due to some other projects I have going on and there are only so many hours in the day, but don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.

On that note, don’t forget that our fiftieth show is coming up in just two more shows. If you would like to contribute an email, a memory, a story, just anything, just “hi, glad you’re keeping the show going” or whatever, you can email those to me at Disability411@jinkle.com or you can call my voicemail line and leave a message at 281668- 4662. I’ve gotten a few emails and messages so far and I really appreciate them. They will be in the show.

On to today’s interview. This interview is with Edith Miller who is the founder of the Delta Alpha Pi National Honor Society for people with disabilities. It’s a great idea and Iwould love to see what I could do to help it spread. So, let’s listen to the interview.

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Beth: Today I am chatting with Edith Miller from the Delta Alpha Pi Honor Society. Edith, thanks for joining me today.

Edith Miller: You’re welcome. I appreciate the opportunity.

Beth: For those who aren’t familiar with Delta Alpha Pi, can you give us just a brief overview?

Edith: Yes, I’d be happy to. Delta Alpha Pi Honor Society was established in 2004. As far as we know, it’s the first and only honor society established specifically to recognizethe academic achievements of college and university students with disabilities.

Beth: Wow. What prompted it’s creation?

Edith: It was my idea. I had thought about for quite a while that there were a number ofhonor societies that people are familiar with that are population specific, based on race, ethnicity, gender, non-standard students and so on. I thought it was really time that students with disabilities were recognized for their considerable accomplishments in theacademic field.

Beth: That’s really a great idea. I hadn’t thought of anything like that. I do work as a college disability counselor and so often people have lower expectations for the students and it’s really not justified. This gives an opportunity to show that yes, just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you can’t achieve high academic standards.

Edith: That’s right. That was one of the reasons that we worked on establishing thishonor society, to try to get rid of some of those myths that are so prevalent about what students with disabilities are not capable of achieving.

Beth: Now I see that the first chapter was set up at East Strausberg University inPennsylvania. How many chapters are there now?

Edith: There are currently twelve nationally.

Beth: If a college or university wanted to start a chapter, what’s involved?

Edith: Well, the first step would be to contact me. We have a paper that has steps for forming a chapter that we disseminate to individuals who are interested. They wouldhave to be willing to find an sponsor or advisor for their chapter and it would require aminimum number of ten students who meet the eligibility criteria in order to establish achapter.

Beth: What are those criteria?

Edith: Academic criteria, of course, since this is a national honor society and the criteria are based on other national honor societies. I took constitutions from four different established honor societies and looked at the criteria for those when establishing whatthe criteria would be for Delta Alpha Pi. Undergraduate students must have completeda minimum of twenty-four credits and have an overall quality average of 3.1 if they areon the 4.0 scale.

Beth: Are these mostly four-year colleges involved or could a community college havea chapter?

Edith: A community college could have a chapter. At this point we have received several requests for information from community colleges, but right now the twelve established chapters are at four-year colleges and universities. As long as the students meetthe criteria, we’d be very happy to have community colleges involved with chapters.

Beth: Now I happen to work at a community college so I admit to having selfish motives when asking that. Does the club have regular meetings or any of that or whathappens if you’re a member of this society?

Edith: Yes, meetings of the honor society are supposed to be held at least twice a semester. Each chapter has some autonomy as to exactly what they want to do and howthey want to have students involved, but we like to have our students involved in education or service activities that have relations to disability issues. Developing advocacy, self-advocacy and also general advocacy for students with disabilities is something thatis one of the goals of the honor society. We meet on a regular basis, we have officers the same as other organizations would have. Some of the universities that have established chapters have had to add certain phrases or criteria to the constitution to meet the requirements of their particular universities. For example, at East Strasbourg University, we have our honor society members serve as mentors for first year students with disabilities.

Beth: You know, I was just thinking that. We have several students who have been there a little while, maybe are older students and have just more of those kinds of skillsbuilt up. Then I see these young students coming straight out of high school who reallyare lost and the idea of hooking them up with a more experienced student with a disability, I’m not going to say “older” because it’s not always age-related, but someone whoalready has some of these skills could really help their success in college. They couldbe a future member of the society.

Edith: Exactly! We found that to be the case. First of all, the students who are arrivingfresh from high school, as we all know, often have not developed good self-advocacy skills. They are used to having someone in the resource room or a parent take care ofeverything. Now suddenly they are on their own and have to meet with professors andtake care of arranging for the accommodations and being advocates for themselves. We are very focused on developing those skills as soon as possible.

By connecting these students with successful upperclassmen with similar disabilitieshas really been a major benefit. Students who may be reluctant to discuss certain issues with adults as far as their accommodations are concerned are much more openwith their peers. We have a mentor training process that we do before we assign the students so the mentors know what is within their realm to handle and what they shouldrefer to one of the faculty members in disability services that would be too difficult or too severe for them to deal with. It’s been a very nice match and it’s interesting to see the expression sometimes on the first year students when they realize that they are actually going to be working with a student who has a disability and is a member of an honor society. A lot of times it’s something they haven’t even thought could occur.

Beth: Not only talking to another student, but a lot of times the disabilities counselormay not have a disability themselves and the opportunity to talk with somebody elsethey may think really understands them better and has faced some of the struggles firsthand, that’s just a great idea. Do you know any of the other activities that some of theother chapters might be doing?

Edith: Well several of the chapters have adopted that program in one way or another and are happy having the upper-class students serving as mentors. That seems to be real popular. Some of them have had educational activities on campus and have had students participate in that. We are also a site for Project Eye-to-Eye. Are you familiar with that?

Beth: No.

Edith: Project Eye-to-Eye is a national program that was established by JonathanMooney, the author of Learning Outside the Lines. It pairs college and university students with disabilities with children in elementary and middle school...

Beth: Yes, I have heard of this.

Edith: It’s an art-based program, an art-based curriculum so that the two student coordinators at the university go for training in the summer and then they are provided withthe curriculum and the money to purchase the materials to go into the schools and workon a one-to-one basis with children. We have an active program going at East Strasbourg University with Project Eye-to-Eye as well. Another great pairing of students inthe honor society with a service project in the community that they can serve as rolemodels. So we have them serving as role models both on campus and in the community.

Beth: This is just fantastic. Once we’re done with the interview I’ll give you my information and maybe you can send me the information about setting up something at my college.

Edith: Sure, I’d love to.

Beth: So, how did you come up with the name Delta Alpha Pi?

Edith: Actually, I was looking for letters that would correlate with major concepts that I had when I first started thinking about the honor society. I wanted Delta because I wanted “D” to stand for “disability” since we’re talking specifically about students withdisability. “Alpha” came along for “achievement” and “P” for “pride”. So Delta, Alpha, and Pi are “disability achievement and pride”. Those are kind of the focus words of the honor society. Then we were also very interested in encouraging people to look at universal design and when we were talking one time among ourselves the founding members and the academic advisor, Dr. Julie Walt, and I were discussing developing the brochure and trying to get things together, the idea of working for an adaptable world popped into my head. The “...dap...” being in the center for “adaptable”, it all kind of fell together at that point, using the letters in that particular order and having “dap” in thecenter.

Beth: That’s very clever. Well done!

Edith: Thank you.

Beth: For example, I know that at out school, students who are members of certainhonor societies there’s some distinguishing regalia they wear at graduation, a cord or aspecial tassel. Is there something like that for this honor society?

Edith: Yes, there is. First of all, when the students are initiated into the honor society, they receive a Delta Alpha Pi Society pin which I actually had designed. I designed thelogo for the honor society and from the logo we had the pin cast. It’s a metal pin thatthey receive that they can wear on a lapel or collar or anyplace they would like to display the pin. Then graduating seniors receive honor cords. Our colors are royal blueand gold. They receive honor cords to wear during the graduation ceremony. Also, I’d like to note that being in Delta Alpha Pi Honor Society does not preclude students from being in any other honor society. We have a number of students who, for example, have graduated wearing several sets of honor cords because they were members ofdiscipline-specific honor societies as well as being in Delta Alpha Pi or a leadership honor society and Delta Alpha Pi and so on. They can actually be quite colorful whenthey have all of their honor cords on at the same time.

Beth: I just think that visual recognition of their achievement is really important. Theywork hard to get there and a little something special at graduation just shows thatachievement. I think that’s a great idea. I’m glad you all are doing that, too.

Edith: We do, too. It’s been amazing, the change in some of our students who werehesitant to admit they have a disability, those of course with invisible disabilities for the majority. They would be hesitant to talk about it or admit to it and after being in thehonor society, several of them became very vocal advocates and very open and willing to discuss their disability and the issues that they had in high school with groups of students who might be visiting campus and things like that. They were very open and several of them actually wrote paragraphs for me for an article for “The Alert”, the AHEAD newsletter. It was very interesting to read how they felt the honor society empoweredthem really to be able to discuss their disability without feeling embarrassed about it. I think that’s been a really positive aspect that several of us who have had early chaptershave seen occur over the years as the students went through the honor society andthen graduated and would talk about the change that being in the honor society helpedto occur for them and their view of the disability.

Beth: That’s amazing. If somebody wanted to get more information about setting up achapter of just to learn more about the honor society, where would they go?

Edith: The best place to email me is my home email address which I would be happyto give to you if you would like me to.

Beth: Sure. You can announce it here or we can just put it on the website, whichever you prefer.

Edith: It looks like candy. It’s candemiller@msn.com. It’s all lowercase.

Beth: Okay, we’ll also have that contact listed in our show notes which, as always, are at Disability411.jinkle.com. Was there anything else you’d like to add before we close today?

Edith: Just one other point I would like to make. That is the added benefit we have seen from faculty response. Now that there’s more notice and publicity about the honor society. Each year when we have an initiation ceremony, it’s not secret. The whole purpose of this organization is to show the public what students have achieved, so the students may bring parents, significant others, friends, we usually have a nice group there for the ceremony. We have them sign release forms so that we can publicize pictures and an article about the ceremony. We’re at the point now where we’re seeing faculty responding to this publicity by saying “hey! This is really great. We never knew this many students with disabilities had accomplished this much academically.” So we’re seeing a change in attitude among faculty members, too, being more responsive to the fact that students with disabilities can achieve academically, too. That has been an added benefit, not just a student change, but a change in faculty attitude as well.

Beth: It sounds like you’ve done a really amazing thing by setting up this honor society. I am really glad to have heard about it and have the opportunity to talk to you. Hopefullythis podcast will help spread the word. I get about five thousand downloads a month.

Edith: That’s exciting. Wow!

Beth: Yes, so that means up to five thousand people, or more, might be hearing this interview. Hopefully you’ll start watching that email box so it doesn’t overflow.

Edith: Yes! I’ll be happy if it overflows and I’ll keep responding to it because we’re always thrilled to send out information and look forward to establishing new chaptersaround the country and around the world hopefully.

Beth: All right. So if anybody out there wants more information on the Delta Alpha Pi Honor Society for students with disabilities, please email Edith. Edith, thanks again forbeing with me today.

Edith: You’re very welcome. It was my pleasure.

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Welcome back. I hope you found that interesting. If you are at a college or university and might be interested in getting a chapter of Delta Alpha Pi started at your college, just email Edith. Her email again is candemiller@msn.com. They don’t have a website up yet, so really the best way to get information is to email her.

That will do it for this show. Don’t forget to email me at Disability411@jinkle.com or call me at 281-668-4662. Visit our website at Disability411.jinkle.com where you can listen to past shows read the transcript of this and all our past shows. Keep an eye out because hopefully there will be some pretty cool changes coming to the website soon.

Until next time, I’m Beth Case with DIsability 411.

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Disability411 podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial No-Derivatives license and is part of the jinkle.com family. Music by the Brobdingnagian Bards is used with permission. Visit our website at Disability411.jinkle.com.