The University of Iowa College of Education

Education at Iowa

Fall 2005

Table of Contents

COUNSELING, REHABILITATION, AND STUDENT DEVELOPMENT

Bioethics Subject of Obermann Symposium

Developing a distinct definition of disability ethics is among the first steps toward completion of a new textbook that Rehabilitation Counseling Professor Vilia Tarvydas hopes will be a seminal work in an emerging topic in bioethics.

According to Tarvydas, scholars in the field of bioethics have traditionally focused on medical technology and the perspectives of mostly non-disabled health care providers without considering the perspectives of people with disabilities.

“That’s what makes our work so important and so unique,” she said after co-hosting a disability ethics symposium this fall with Carol Gill, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Kristi Kirschne, M.D., of Northwestern University.

The event, sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, featured scholars from around the nation via video conference.

Gill said that in cases involving disabled persons seeking the right to die, health care providers and the public must begin to see disability issues not from only a medical standpoint, but in terms of the social and political factors involved.

Scholars seek information on bioethics.
Scholars seek information on bioethics.

“We should be examining the barriers society has erected that demoralize people to the point that they find it too difficult to live with their disability,” said Gill, herself a wheelchair user. “All too often these are viewed as ‘right to die’ cases when the focus should be on our inability to muster the social resources they need to live.”

Gill and Tarvydas said media outlets must reframe disability issues.

“Unfortunately, a lot of what the general public sees in the media surrounds certain sensational events, like the Terri Schiavo case, which polarized the whole country,” Tarvydas said, adding that media must consult people who have another perspective, especially people with disabilities.

“My personal hope would be that eventually this other perspective will become well known enough that somebody might reach out and consult scholars and advocacy groups in disability ethics so the general public can hear other voices,” she said.

As director of the UI’s Institute on Ethics in Disability Policy and Rehabilitation Practice, Tarvydas hopes to create what she described as a vibrant community of scholars that crosses disciplines and involves numerous academic institutions.

Scholars seek to influence disability policy development nationally, locally, and in professional organizations. The institute will focus on the ethical aspects of services people with disabilities receive from rehabilitation, health, mental health, and social services while living in community settings rather than on acute medical care or traditional bioethics issues.

Tarvydas said Iowa has a well-respected tradition of leadership in rehabilitation ethics, beginning in the late 1960s when C. Esco Obermann led a group that wrote rehabilitation counseling’s first code of ethics.

–by Joe Nugent

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Kuh and Whitt Author Important Text

Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter.

Why are students more likely to thrive at—and graduate from—some colleges than others? This central question is answered in a new book co-authored by Student Development Professor Elizabeth Whitt, Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research Director George Kuh (PhD ’75), Iowa State University Professor John Schuh, and Jillian Kinzie, associate director of the Documenting Effective Education Practice (DEEP) initiative.

Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter examines schools that have navigated burgeoning student populations, lagging state support, and other challenges to create environments where students thrive.

Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, D.C., called the volume “one of the most important and timely books ever written about what makes an engaged—and successful—student in today’s colleges and universities.”

Assessing Conditions to Enhance Educational Effectiveness: The Inventory for Student Engagement and Success.

The authors also developed a companion workbook for the text, Assessing Conditions to Enhance Educational Effectiveness: The Inventory for Student Engagement and Success. This next-step resource will help an institution assess whether a success-oriented campus culture and learning environment have been created.

The workbook can be used to focus institutional improvement or strategic planning efforts, inform self studies for accreditation and program reviews, and augment student learning outcomes assessment and related efforts to measure institutional performance.

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