ADFS had a fantastic turnout at our Winter Social (~30 people!) a couple weeks ago. If you could not attend, we’ve got you covered with this quick recap and opportunities to stay involved:
- 65 staff and faculty are now members of ADFS!
- We decided to create a MS Teams group – you should have received an invitation to join on Wednesday. Email Stacy if you have any issues joining.
- We decided to create four “workgroups” to make progress toward our goals (names and goals are tentative):
- Disability Experience Workgroup – assess, document, and share the disabled staff and faculty experience at UCI
- Community Building Workgroup – build and support a strong community of disabled faculty and staff and their allies at UCI
- Accessible Staff Picnic Workgroup – advocate for a more accessible annual UCI Staff Appreciation picnic
- Visioning Workgroup – plan and host visioning activities that will guide ADFS initiatives
- In addition to our quarterly socials, starting in Spring, ADFS will hold monthly “business meetings” (optional) to coordinate across workgroups.
- ADFS is now an official Campus Organization, and we should appear under the faculty and staff listing soon (HUGE thanks to Kelsey and Meredith for the hours of work they put in to make this happen!)
We invite you to complete this short survey if you are interested in joining a workgroup. Workgroups will be fairly autonomous; they will set priorities and goals, decide how often they meet and how they do work together.
And if you don’t want to join a workgroup or our MS Teams group? No problem! ADFS is meant to be a place for community, support, and advocacy, whatever that means for individual members. The last thing we want is for this group to be an obligation or source of stress. Please know that you are all valued members of our community, however you choose to participate!
Stay tuned for our Spring social date and dates for our optional monthly business meetings. May you all have a successful end to your quarter and a restful Spring Break!
ADFS Co-Chairs,
Stacy Branham
Meredith Ehrenberg
Kelsey Layos