HuskyADAPT Newsletter: April 16th, 2021

Hi HuskyADAPT! I hope you are enjoying the sunshine! Please see below for ways to get involved with us. As a reminder, our leadership role applications will be closing this Wednesday at 11:59 pm.

HuskyADAPT events and opportunities:

HuskyADAPT Toy Adaptation Workshop April 21st: 5:30 - 7:30 pm PSTRSVP by April 16th

We are hosting another virtual toy adaptation! We will be distributing toy adaptation kits for participants to join in on a virtual toy adaptation session over Zoom. This event is open to all UW students. No toy adaptation experience is necessary, but an avryf).

HuskyADAPT Leadership Role ApplicationsDeadline: April 21st 11:59 pm PSTApplication link

Our application is live for both our student executive chairs and HuskyADAPT ambassador positions. Please contact Molly Mollica (mollica with questions about the application process

The HuskyADAPT Student Executive Chairs are the student leaders who plan and facilitate most of the opportunities listed in these emails. Time commitment is ~5 hours per week.

• HuskyADAPT Student Chair: Coordinates Student Exec Board meetings, serves as the main HuskyADAPT contact, communicates with faculty advisors, organizes finances and spearheads funding applications, and mentors/supports other officers. Useful skills/experiences include leadership (especially previous leadership with HuskyADAPT), communication, organization, and event management.
• Toy Adaptation Chairs: Leader for on-campus toy adaptation efforts and for toy donation and distribution (including leading collaborations with toy library organizations such as the PNW Adapted Toy Library and a growing collaboration with King County Library System.) Essential skills include ability to plan and facilitate events (2 events per month, 20 to 50 people per event), expertise in toy adaptation, and strong organizational skills. Helpful experiences include regular attendance at toy adaptation events.
• Community Engagement Chairs: Leader for community engagement through partnerships with K-12 students, industry partners, and clinical partners. Note that this includes all toy adaptation and design events held off-campus as well as on-campus K-12 outreach such as tours and Discovery Days. Essential skills include ability to plan and facilitate events, expertise in toy adaptation, and strong organizational skills.
• GoBabyGo Chair: Responsible for helping develop a sustainable UW GoBaby Go program integrated with HuskyADAPT. This may include coordinating volunteers and necessary logistics for GoBabyGo workshops, assisting with marketing development for the GoBabyGo program and workshops, overseeing GoBabyGo design team(s), leading the GoBabyGo Committee. Helpful experiences/skills include knowledge of the national GoBabyGo organization, ability to plan and lead events, and passion for inclusion and importance of early mobility for children with disabilities. Previous toy or car adaptation experience or electrical/wiring experience a plus! This position will also require additional planning meetings with the Co-Directors of UW Go Baby Go from Rehab Medicine, Shawn Rundell and Heather Feldner.
• Design Chairs: Leader for student design projects that tackle accessibility challenges in our community. This includes determining suitable design projects, creating design teams, mentoring and teaching technical skills to design teams, and hosting "designathon" events (similar to a hackathon) to make progress on a design problem in one day. Essential skills include design knowledge and experience and organizational skills.
• Communication Chairs: Leader of communication! Manages and updates the HuskyADAPT website and social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), creates flyers about events occurring through the year. Helpful skills include Wordpress, social media skills, organization and communication skills.

HuskyADAPT Ambassadors are student leaders who support the Student Exec Board by attending events and serving as leaders at those events. Time commitment is ~30 minutes per week (about 1 event per month.)

• HuskyADAPT Ambassador: Interested in HuskyADAPT but aren't ready or don't have the time to commit to a Student Executive Board position (5 hours/week)? HuskyADAPT Ambassador is a position for students that are particularly engaged in HuskyADAPT that we can call upon when we need extra help tabling an event, attending/teaching toy adaptation, giving feedback to design teams, or etc. We would like Ambassadors to attend about 1 event/month, which will result in a time commitment of ~30 mins/week or 2 hours/month. Note that this is a substantial but smaller commitment than the Executive Chair positions above.

HuskyADAPT Slack Channel Challenges

Join Slack

In the upcoming months, we will be posting a series of challenges on our Slack channel with the opportunity to win some HuskyADAPT swag! The challenges will be designed to foster community engagement and discussion while we are all working remotely and will be accessible to all in the HuskyADAPT community. We will post more information about the challenges on Slack in the next few weeks, so be sure to join our channel!

HuskyADAPT news:

Spring Design Review: Last week, our design teams presented their current design solutions to the HuskyADAPT community. Thank you to everyone that attended and offered feedback to the teams. It was exciting to see all of the innovative work that our teams are doing and we are looking forward to the final designs! If you missed the design review, you can check out a recording here. Accessibility Text: A screenshot of a design team's zoom presentation. The slide is titled 'Design' and includes a bulleted list of safety features, Bluetooth kit parameters, and app development guidelines pertinent to the design. It also includes images of wiring diagrams for the Bluetooth kit.

Spring Kickoff Meeting: Last week we also hosted our Spring quarter kickoff meeting where we discussed how new and existing HuskyADAPT members can get involved with us. You can view the recording for that meeting here.

Opportunities from our collaborators and friends:

Engineering Innovation in Health Info Session April 26th 4:30 - 5:30pm PSTRSVP

Engineering Innovation in Health is a 3-quarter capstone design sequence that promotes collaborations between engineering and health sciences to develop technical solutions to pressing challenges in healthcare. The course is open to all UW BS seniors, MS, and PhD students in engineering. If you are interested in learning more about the course, consider RSVPing for the info session or visiting eih.uw.edu.

Study on the Impact of the Pandemic on Play Access and Inclusion

We are a group of researchers from HuskyADAPT and the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington. We would like to invite you to participate in this study about how the pandemic has impacted access to play and recreation for learners with disabilities. Specifically, we are interested in responses from the following groups: people who identify as disabled and caregivers, therapists, or other providers. You can join the study here.

Have a great weekend!