NEURODIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION

The conversations around diversity and inclusion in the geosciences have focused on gender and ethnicity, because geoscience lags for these groups. However, the most neglected, underserved population in almost all fields are those who think differently. Adults on the Autism Spectrum are underemployed and an underutilized resource in the science enterprise.

Six years ago, the USGS embarked on a partnership with local school districts to train students with cognitive disabilities for employment. The students who work with the USGS through this partnership have a wide range of social and cognitive skills, but often no high school diploma. The best match for USGS are those students who have intense focus, are satisfied with repetitive tasks, and often possess a special talent with numbers, pattern recognition, or visual acuity. These students advance the science at USGS by sorting and counting microfossils, scanning and digitizing paper records to preserve critical data sets, running automated lab equipment, digitizing locations in ArcGIS, sorting and cataloguing rock and fossil collections, and many other projects.

The students benefit by gaining first-hand experiences of valuable job skills and critical workplace social and interpersonal office behaviors. The program helps the students on the path toward financial independence, something many of them never thought they’d achieve.

Although USGS works with students who won’t go to college, there are students with cognitive disabilities on every college campus. They are often brilliant, thrive in their courses, and will be unable to get a job afterward; 85% of college graduates with Autism are unemployed. College professors can help change that by offering these neurodiverse students job opportunities and research experiences while they are still in school so that they can build their workplace skills along with their academic knowledge, and be better prepared for the job market. At University of Cincinnati, professors are doing just that, and both the students and the research are benefiting. The presentation will share examples of inclusively designed experiences that support the active participation of students’ wide breadth of abilities.