Abstract
How do Disabled Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) students experience their disabilities in the context of their fields? In what ways do those experiences affect their performance, relationship to their classmates, and relationship to their professors? What steps can be taken to strengthen accommodations, community, and understanding? In this paper, these questions are assessed through an online survey of twenty-eight Disabled and non-Disabled undergraduate STEM majors. Many notable complaints were revealed, most dealing with hard-access physical issues or lack of resources. By their nature, many accessibility issues around UNCA were structural, as opposed to social. However, social barriers still played an important role in the experiences of respondents, with difficulties with social events the most common criticism.
Keywords
Disability, sociology, neurodivergence, Discrit, STEM, Science, Biology, STEM departments, Science departments
How to Cite
Crabtree, K., (2025) “The Elevator and the Iron Cage: Disabled STEM Students at UNC Asheville”, Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 38(2).
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