Higher Education Consulting
Helping institutions build disability into policy, practice, and campus life.
On most campuses, disability is handled primarily as a legal and medical matter—managed through accommodations—rather than examined as part of institutional design or as a dimension of campus life alongside other forms of diversity. Responsibility is concentrated in disability services and HR, while the policies, practices, and routines that structure everyday campus life are left largely unexamined.
Many of the barriers disabled students encounter are produced by institutional norms, standard operating procedures, and campus policies. These include how participation is defined and designed, how academic and administrative processes are structured, and how disability is reflected in cultural and physical infrastructure. Together, these patterns shape who can participate in academic and campus life, under what conditions, and on what terms.
The same dynamics shape outcomes for disabled faculty. Their ability to remain and succeed is structured by how roles are defined, how performance is evaluated—including tenure and promotion—and how expectations around productivity, presence, and pace are established and enforced.
Student-Facing Systems
Disabled students encounter barriers far beyond the formal accommodation process. Academic and administrative procedures, participation expectations, communications, technology, programming, and physical spaces all shape whether students can access and participate in campus life.
I examine how these systems operate together: where responsibility for access sits, which burdens are placed on students, and whether disability is considered before an individual student must request an exception. This may include registration, housing, classroom and event participation, student services, communications, digital access, and other routine points of interaction with the institution.
I also examine whether disability is visible in the broader life of the campus—in governance, strategic priorities, cultural programming, affinity spaces, student organizations, and institutional communications. Accommodations can provide access to particular activities. They do not by themselves create disability identity, community, collective voice, or belonging.
Faculty- and Staff-Facing Systems
Colleges and universities are also employers. Disabled faculty and staff are retained or lost through ordinary institutional systems: how work is assigned, how performance is evaluated, how advancement is structured, and how expectations around productivity, presence, and career pace are defined and enforced. Policies may appear neutral while embedding unnecessarily rigid assumptions about how, where, and how quickly professional work should be performed.
For faculty, these systems include departmental norms, meeting and communication practices, teaching and service expectations, and tenure and promotion standards. For staff, they include role design, scheduling, supervision, performance evaluation, and leave and return-to-work practices. Leadership decisions about how these systems are interpreted and applied can either compound disability-related barriers or help sustain talent.
Employee accommodation processes are part of this picture, but they cannot carry the whole burden. I examine whether those processes support a genuine search for effective accommodations and whether the surrounding employment systems provide enough flexibility for disabled faculty and staff to contribute, advance, and remain.
Consulting Services
Leadership Briefings
Leadership briefings are for senior leaders seeking to improve access and retention by understanding how institutional policies, governance structures, and routine decisions produce disability-related barriers.
The purpose is to clarify the central problem, explain its consequences for disabled students, faculty, and staff, and identify the decisions that require leadership attention.
Audits and Diagnostic Reviews
Audits and diagnostic reviews help institutions identify where student-facing and employment systems are producing barriers, fragmented responsibility, inconsistent practices, or preventable attrition.
A review examines how responsibilities, decisions, and practices operate across the institution—and where the relationship among them breaks down. Depending on the engagement, it may focus on student access, faculty and staff retention, or the systems connecting both.
The result is a diagnosis of structural failure points and a set of priorities for change.
Policy, Process, and Systems Redesign
Policy, process, and systems redesign helps institutions translate diagnosis into practical changes in how access is organized, responsibility is assigned, and decisions are made.
Depending on scope, this may include revising policies and procedures, clarifying roles and decision authority, redesigning workflows, improving coordination across offices, or changing institutional practices that create unnecessary barriers for disabled students, faculty, and staff.
The scope is tailored to the institution’s priorities, authority, and capacity for implementation.
Speaking and Workshops
Institutions may also begin with a leadership presentation or workshop.
Ableism in Campus Policies and Practices helps participants identify disability-related barriers embedded in ordinary campus policies, procedures, routines, and participation expectations.
From Compliance to Belonging examines whether disability is reflected in the governance, priorities, programming, communications, and community life of the institution.
Retaining Disabled Faculty and Staff: What Leadership and Departments Need to Know examines how departmental policies, practices, and norms affect whether disabled faculty and staff remain and succeed.
Start a Conversation
I accept a limited number of higher education consulting engagements. To request a leadership briefing, audit or diagnostic review, or redesign engagement, please contact me.