Susann Sears.Susann Sears, the director of Beckwith Residential Support Services and the assistant director of academic services with the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has joined the Beckman Institute.
Sears has more than two decades of educational and professional experience serving college students with disabilities. She holds a Ph.D. in community health with a rehabilitation emphasis from Illinois and is currently a research assistant professor of health and kinesiology. Her research areas are factors impacting the career readiness of college students with disabilities, empathic design methodology and its impacts on overall quality of life outcomes for everyday living and emerging adulthood and disability identity.
Her key research collaborator at Beckman will be Deana McDonagh, a professor in the School of Art and Design and leader of the (dis)Ability Design Studio, where Sears serves as the Director of Enriching Life Experiences.
"The goal is to cultivate an engaging learning/work environment both [for] students with and without disabilities for them to work collaboratively together to solve the design challenges proposed through the everyday experiences of physical landscape and disability. The goal of this proposed research will contribute to a wide variety of areas such as student engagement outcomes, qualify of life, and empathic modeling in the product design process."
