[Nfb-science] qualifying exam accommodations

Tue Oct 5 04:18:04 UTC 2010

I am blind with a lot worse vision than what you discribed.  This sounds a
lot like my master thesis defense.  Presenting my research and having a
board of Dr. in the field pose Qs for as long as they want.  I have also
worked at the University of Cincinnati for almost 10 years.  I have seen
many defenses of both masters and DRs.  For the last 10 years I have worked
in an R&D division with very chalenging people.  I do not bye the statement
that the test was unfair an oral exam is one of the most fare tests one can
have.  Even if you do not get the visual Qs a test like this will prepare
you for real world challenges.  Reading body language can also be auditory ,
IE. People moving around or loud breathing.  A truly intrested group does
not move aroun much. What has served me well is to not blame things on "not
fair" and do not make blindness an issue, when I do this people treat me as
a peer.  Even if test are unfair all test are unfair to one group or
another.  
I do not know very many blind people but the few I know seem to bring up the
fact that they are blind in more than half of the conversations they have.
I do not understand this. I never bring the topic up unless I am asked.  In
the last 10 years I think the topic has only come up once at work.  If it is
never brought up as a problem then it will not become one.

Some advice.
1. work hard, work some more, then work some more.
2. Do not give up from what you stated you are doing super, do not let one
setback stop you.
2. Let your record do the talking.  My eyes look very strange and I have had
many job interviews that have went very well over the phone and when we meet
in person and they see me the interview ends very quickly.  That is there
loss and I do not want to work for some one like that.  Now that I have a
long record of achievement this is no longer a problem.
3. now that I have a high level position I do not have to prove myself any
more than anyone else.  Just starting out everyone must prove them selves,
some more than others but that is OK. 
4. Is not fare does not cut it in the real world.  Every thing is unfair in
its own way so do not get depressed or hung up on that.  Go to the testers
and asked what did I do or not do to not pass.  Do not make blindness a
topic and I think you will find that it is not a problem.

Pleas keep going if you want to do somethin go for it.  Remember most people
that can see could not do what you are doing.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org]
On Behalf Of Stephanie Hirst
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 1:56 PM
To: NFB Science and Engineering Division List
Subject: [Nfb-science] qualifying exam accommodations

Hello,

As a listserv of fellow blind/visually impaired scientists and
engineers, I was hoping some of hou may have some advice for me.  I am
currently in the beginning of my third yar		 in the Vanderbilt
University Chemical and Physical Biology graduate program where I am
in the lab of Jens Meiler doing computational protein structure
prediction.  My visual acuity is about 20/400 and is basically
non-correctable (I have oculocutaneous albinism).  My glasses only
help somewhat, but even with them, I'm still legally blind.

Anyway, I recently took my qualifying exam, which one needs to pass in
order to be considered a qualified PhD candidate.  While I, my peers,
my exam committee, and my mentor (PI) all agree that I'm actually
quite qualified to work for my doctoral degree, I did not pass my
exam.  This was to the surprise and shock of everyone, including
myself, because I seemed to do very well in my mock exam beforehand.
I am quite knowledgeable about my proposed research and most of the
background, but the committee did not like the things I was proposing,
but that is beside the point of the email,.

Among other things, it was brought to my attention that the exam
format may be somewhat unfair for visually impaired students.  It is a
90-minute oral exam, but you do now know beforehand what they are
going to ask.  One can anticipate a little, but I anticipated wrong!
The format is basically like this:
   Two weeks before the exam, you submit an NIH style proposal of your
thesis research that you want to do to your committee.  They are
supposed to read this before the exam.
   On the day of the exam, you have 5 minutes to present 3 powerpoint
slides describing what you want to do for your research.
   After the 5 minutes, they ask you open-ended, somewhat
unpredictable questions for 90 minutes based on the proposal and the
background concerning your research.  This is to test the student's
ability to defend their proposed research and to see if they hve
adequate background to do it.
   The exam is pretty discussion-based, and there is a lot of give and
take.  The committee members (there are 4) tend to feed off of each
other, and often new questions stem from questions asked previously.

One idea is that I had a hard time with this discussion-based format
because I cannot erad visual cues, such as facial expressions, hand
movements, signs of irritations or disappointment, etc.  I also get no
positive feedback.  I also memorized my power point slides because I
personally can't see them.  In this case they were more for the
committee than myself, even though other students tell me they used
them to kind of jog their memory if they get stuck on a subject.  For
me, it's just more morization and things to remember and worry about.

The person who proposed the idea that the exam format may have been a
problem for me as a visually impaired student has a masters in special
education.  She says:

"Hi Steph, my thought was that when a sighted person goes to a
committee qualifying exam, they rely heavily on visual cues and body
language cues from the faces of the committee members. For example,
the sighted person can tell when they should provide more information
at a particular juncture, after noticing that two of the committee
members clearly require more information.  They also know when to stop
talking about something, if the committee members are displaying
fidgeting or exchanging glances etc.  The low-vision student may not
be able to benefit from those cues.  So, it would be reasonable for
someone to sit with the student, and perhaps suggest "Dr. Y seems to
be looking for more information on that topic."  or "The committee
appears to have heard enough on that slide and you can move on."  The
second thing is that from what I understand you do not read your
slides - so the slides are not useful to you but only serve as a
visual cue for the committee?  You memorize your slides and the places
to put your pointer?  Correct?  Well, I think that having a person
with you to help with those visual things would be helpful. The person
would have to be someone trained to work with low vision people."

So I was wondering if any of you have experience anything similar to
this and would have suggestions on how to handle this situation.  Do
you think it is fair to ask for accommodations to make the exam more
fair?  Or do you think the exam is already fair?  Remember that this
is no normal oral exam where they have a written test that they just
read the questions out to you.  These questions are extremely hard, if
not impossible, to predict, are very open ended, and are mostly based
on the discussion occurring around them in the room.  We had some
ideas on possible accommodations.  1) Instead of 90-minutes of open
ended questions, give a 45-minute presentation with a shorter period
of questioning, 2) meet one on one with each committee member for 20
minutes so they can ask questions, instead of having all four sit at
the end of a table and ask questions at the same time, 3) have the
same format as before but with a mediator (perhaps someone from DSS)
who can help provide more verbal cues that I don't get visually.  Do
you guys have any other ideas?  How do you handle such situations?  I
have spoken with the disability services people here, but this is
quite a unique case (not too many VI/blind people in chemistry PhD
programs here), and I think they know about as much as I do.

Of course I'm not trying to get out of taking the exam or cheat, and I
know I will need more practice.  I wonder if this is a valid thing
that will be important if future disabled students come along, though.
 Thoughts?

Thanks and looking forward to hearing from you,

Stephanie Hirst

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