ITHACA, N.Y. -- Pat Podufalski, an administrative aide in the president's office at Cornell University since 1977, was injured in a car accident as a young woman. Those who observe her at work for the first time marvel at how efficiently she is able to do her job despite the perceived challenges of using a wheelchair. Co-workers, however, take her energy and pluckiness for granted, having watched her balance a full-time job with marriage and two children. "There's not much she isn't able to do," said an office mate. Podufalski credits hard work plus understanding colleagues and supervisors with her on-the-job success, but until 1990 when Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), she worried a lot about job security. What was to prevent her job from being eliminated by someone who was unsympathetic to employing people with disabilities, she wondered?
Despite the passage of ADA, in recent years it has become harder for people with disabilities to find and keep jobs, said Bruyère. It's troubling that there hasn't been more progress since the groundbreaking statute was instituted, she commented. Now Bruyère's program has formed an alliance with two other groups of researchers to find out how economic trends and public policy are contributing to the slow rate of progress, and what can be done to change things.
Joining Bruyère's alliance are the Department of Policy Analysis and Management (PAM) in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, and the Lewin Group, a private non-partisan policy-analysis group in Fairfax, Va.
"It's not uncommon for people with disabilities to be fearful that employers won't hire them, nor is it unreasonable for them to worry that, if they have a job, they won't be allowed to stay or get ahead," said Susanne Bruyère. She directs the Program on Employment and Disability in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, just a short walk from Poldufalski's workplace, but a challenging trek for someone who gets around Cornell's hilly campus by wheelchair. Among other things, the program helps young people with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from school to the workplace.
The new group's formidable name -- the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for Economic Research on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities -- spells out its purpose but is likely to challenge staff who answer the phone. Just call it CEREPD (pronounced serepidy) or the center, for short.
In December 1998 Bruyère and her colleagues got the exciting news that they had been awarded a five-year, $3.5 million grant to further their efforts from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
Professor Richard Burkhauser, who is chair of the College of Human Ecology's PAM, will be a co-principal investigator at the center, along with Bruyère and David Stapleton of the Lewin Group. Burkhauser called the news of the grant "exciting," but noted that there would be five years of hard work ahead. "There's a plethora of conflicting policies concerning people with disabilities," he said. "We hope to identify the contradictions and recommend a more systematic set of goals."
In addition, Burkhauser said, the center will improve the information policy-makers have on people with disabilities -- including shifting their thinking from a one-size-fits-all approach to one that takes into account the many kinds of disabilities people may have. The group also will give advocates for people with disabilities much-needed data, and will train Cornell students in disability policy research. "We will be a research leader in those important areas," he predicted.
Researchers at the center will assess information on workers over their lifetimes and measure the effects of their disabilities on their employment, compensation and job satisfaction. They also will do in-depth and long-term analyses on workers with disabilities, including weighing the impact of labor market changes as well as civil rights protections on their employment and earnings.
Bruyère, who is the project director, said that in addition the group will archive national databases and working papers at Cornell and make them accessible to researchers and policy-makers across the country. They will also offer a web site on employment and people with disabilities and sponsor a national conference in Washington, D.C., and two summer institutes at Cornell on employment and disability policy.
In Day Hall, Podufalski was pleased to learn that Cornell will be working to alter policy-makers' perceptions of people with disabilities. ADA was a start, she said. Since then, she added, we've discovered that "changing the architecture" to accommodate people with disabilities "is expensive but easy. It's changing people's attitudes that's difficult."
For more information on the center, contact Susanne Bruyère, 106 ILR Extension Building, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-3901; telephone: 607-255-7727; fax: 607-255-2763; TDD: 607-252891; e-mail: smb23 @cornell.edu; web site: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/rrtc.
Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.
Program on Employment and Disability: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ped
Rehabilitation and Research Training Center: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/rrtc