Advancing neurodiversity at Cornell University (Conversations from Davos)

In this episode of Conversations from Davos, Dr. Maureen Dunne speaks with Eve De Rosa of Cornell University about building truly neuroinclusive campuses. They explore how Cornell is leading the way in higher education, showing how research, teaching methods, and innovation can drive systemic change, empower neurodivergent individuals, and foster a campus culture where people of all learning styles can thrive.

This special season of Minds at Work is brought to you by Understood.org and the Davos Neurodiversity Summit. For a transcript and more resources, visit Minds at Work on Understood.org. You can also email us at podcast@understood.org.

Maureen Dunne: Welcome to "Conversations from Davos," a special season of "Minds at Work," brought to you by Understood.org and the "Davos Neurodiversity Summit." Here, we're unpacking the most important themes from this year's summit.

I'm Maureen Dunne. I'm a cognitive scientist, an author, and the founder of the "Davos Neurodiversity Summit." Today, I'm delighted to be speaking with Professor of Human Ecology, Eve De Rosa.

Professor De Rosa is an esteemed neuroscientist at Cornell University and, in 2021, she was named Dean of Faculty. She's the first woman and the first person of color to hold that title at Cornell. She understands deeply the importance of making a university campus a place where all people can thrive. And that includes people who think and learn differently.

While she wasn't able to be in attendance at this year's "Neurodiversity Summit," she was recognized for her advocacy and impact on our leadership wall. I invited her to join us on the podcast because I really wanted to hear from her about what we can do to make campuses more inclusive. And not just for students, but also for faculty and staff. Professor De Rosa, welcome to our podcast.

Eve De Rosa: Thank you, Maureen, so much for inviting me to join the conversation.

Maureen: So, I've had a lot of conversations over the years with business leaders and education leaders about how to create work environments and learning environments that are genuinely neuroinclusive. So, you know, going beyond the sort of tick the box type of approaches.

But I think sometimes higher education gets left out of that conversation. Or it could end up being focused solely on the student experience. And as Dean of Faculty, in your experience, is neuroinclusion something that you think people are paying attention to?

Eve: Absolutely. We have a campus-wide initiative that's offered for the entire community called "Neurodiversity at Cornell." And it's for all parts of our community — students, staff, faculty, leadership. And we have resources, obviously, for our students and staff. And then every spring, we have a celebration where everybody shares their stories. It's wonderful.

Maureen: That's fabulous. Yeah. And you've had so many leadership roles and I know as Dean of Faculty, you've talked a lot about building these mentorship structures, which I think is so incredibly important so that exceptional scholars and researchers and faculty feel valued, right?

And feel like Cornell is this place where they can belong. And I'm curious from your experience, what does that look like in practice for neurodivergent faculty?

Eve: So in terms of our resources for faculty and staff, we have something called "Neurodiversity Ambassadors," and it's open to the whole community. But it is an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to advocate for increased understanding of neurodiversity at Cornell.

And it's about improving the experiences on campus, their wellbeing. And so that's one core part. And then we also have support services where our students, staff, faculty — depending on who needs it — they can come in and speak with counselors on arranging accommodations to your physical, mental, sensory spaces. And they have both academic and co-curricular kind of support.

Maureen: That's amazing and inspiring. And I want to talk a little bit about the student experience and I know Cornell offers a lot of support for neurodivergent students and as you mentioned, "Neurodiversity at Cornell" is sort of a cornerstone of some of the offerings and experiences. Maybe you can elaborate just a little bit more about what those resources entail and how it helps the community and the students.

Eve: Absolutely. I want to celebrate the work of a key leader on our campus. Her name is Flor Arden. And Flor was the person who founded "Neurodiversity at Cornell." And we just celebrated her with one of our most prestigious teaching honors at the university for her inclusive teaching practices, but also for her founding of "Neurodiversity at Cornell."

In terms of the approaches that we use, we have the opportunity for individualized and group study consultations. And so getting study strategies, planning, how to advocate for yourself in the classroom. And then there are actual courses that Flor leads where she teaches how to build metacognition — critical thinking, college achievement — and really teaching students how to improve their metacognitive awareness and set their academic goals.

And as part of building inclusive practices, she's also looked at including universal design. And so just making sure that we've designed our spaces and our tools for accessing our courses in a very approachable way.

And she does this in collaboration with our "Center for Teaching Innovation." And so having flexible assessments for our students, quiet spaces, for example. There are workshops for faculty as well, to bring awareness to faculty on how to teach and advise neurodivergent students.

And so how do you recognize characteristics without someone having to self-identify? How do you adapt your advising and instruction? How do you just make it welcoming to the students and support them?

(06:21) Gen Z neurodiversity and university accessibility infrastructure.

Maureen: That's wonderful and inspiring. And I know the folks at Understood, they talk a lot about a statistic we've learned that over 50% of Gen Z identifies as neurodivergent. I don't know if you've seen that statistic. It's pretty interesting.

And I was curious, in your experience and in your role, if students have been speaking out more proudly or maybe advocating for themselves more in the classroom, if you've seen any changes in recent years.

Eve: Well, one, you're correct. Just in higher ed, I think there's been a 35 to 40% increase in students advocating for themselves for accommodations. And so in addition to all of the infrastructure that Flor's created that I've described, we've also had our "Office of Student Disability Services."

I would love to change the name of that, but it's alongside of her work, the SDS also plays a really important role in ensuring accessibility and equity across the campus. And here they actively partner with faculty and staff to make it equitable and accessible.

And so they'll make accommodations for physical, medical, mental health, sensory. All of those get supported in not just the academic spaces, but also the co-curricular spaces. And so whether it's helping them navigate how to get to their coursework and make their course materials accessible or supporting alternative testing, we've built infrastructure around that.

We found a lot of faculty with this huge need. Faculty were starting to feel overwhelmed by the asks, and so the university built structures to help faculty and support them. So we now have alternative testing spaces. And also, we give individualized consultations on both digital and physical accessibility.

Maureen: That's great and it sounds like that's a lot of progress. And you mentioned the "Student Disability Services," and I know this isn't specific to Cornell, right? This is an issue with all institutions of higher education where that in many cases ends up being the first experience, right, a student may have where they make a decision of where is there this sense of belonging that becomes real or not.

And I'm curious, like, how do you think about this relationship between accommodations and then more generally what would be considered good design or universal design for everyone? And given your impactful leadership, you know, how do you help faculty maybe even shift these mindsets to move from mere compliance to some creative solutions?

Eve: Well, I think that this is where the "Center for Teaching Innovation" comes in, because they have pushed our faculty to move away from just the traditional professor at the front of the lecture hall giving this lecture and just a wall of information for an hour plus.

And so really trying to change how faculty may flip the classroom and maybe disrupt that lecture and break into small groups and allow students to interact with each other on a smaller scale. Or physical, active, move around the space and go do this exercise here and another activity here that are all tied to the lesson plan.

And so really expanding how we think about what a lecture is. And so sometimes some faculty are now just 100% using their classroom as flipped. So students do all the work outside, do all the readings, and we're going to give what you've learned outside the classroom meaning from just peer conversations or activities that they design to the lesson plan. So I find that more and more faculty are moving in that direction. And it benefits all students, it's not just for those who are neurodivergent. And so I agree with you.

I think, you know, it was interesting when you were saying sort of those first moments. It's a different space for undergraduates. What I loved about what you said about that is that these are young adults who are leaving the home where others may have advocated for them and this is the first time that maybe they have to.

And they have to navigate so many things even just to share with someone that they're eligible for support. And so I just wanted to intentionally acknowledge how much that takes for them to understand that they have to prepare documentation, certify that they're eligible for support, then how to navigate interacting with your faculty member and get the support that you need.

And I think student campus life now really supports all students in advocating for themselves. And so it's not that neurodivergent students have to do something different. But it is something new that all of them have to learn, but there is that added sort of vulnerability, I would say, around it.

(12:13) Exploring Cornell’s Community Neuroscience Initiative and Syracuse outreach.

Maureen: That's amazing and so right. And I want to talk a little bit about the student experience and I want to talk a little bit about the transformative work that the "Community Neuroscience Initiative" at Cornell is doing — which I've been so fortunate to have witnessed firsthand.

And I'd like to focus on the "Get to Know Your Brain" program in partnership with under-resource schools in Syracuse. I just think it's such an amazing and transformative work. Can you tell us a little bit more about that program? What is it, and why is it important to bring this kind of curriculum to young students?

Eve: So happy. This is obviously near and dear to both of our hearts. I'm a co-founder of the "Community Neuroscience Initiative" at Cornell and it's directed by Assistant Professor Marlen Gonzalez.

So even before students arrive at college, we're reaching out to not only the students but also their families and also the teachers who are instructing them so that from a very early age — we're working from kindergarten to sixth grade right now, eighth grade actually — that they understand that every brain is different.

And so the "Community Neuroscience Initiative" really is about — well obviously it's community facing — it's also about how to democratize the science and empower the communities themselves. By doing that, we've already shown that different brains is normal. It's expected. And also every brain is shaped by all your experiences and your context.

And so what we do in terms of programming, we teach neuroscience to teachers in training. And we have scholars from all around the country give lectures about the latest and greatest neuroscience that they're doing. And then we help the teachers translate that into a lesson plan that's grade appropriate.

And then we go into the classroom and the students learn about emotions, emotion regulation, how neurons talk to each other and form a community, and how perception can be so different from one person to the other. So it's a wonderful program and we call it "Get to Know Your Brain Day."

And we chose to do it in Syracuse. I think by starting there, we're taking untapped talent and we're hoping that they're going to have a love for science early and they'll be future neuroscientists. Obviously you and I know that everyone's a neuroscientist, but we want them to celebrate that while we're getting them excited about STEM and expanding their vocabulary and things like that.

Maureen: Yeah. And what I find really exciting about the program it seems too is that the initiative is not just influencing and bringing research and neuroscience to these under-resource schools, but we're also learning, right? As researchers and scholars from our communities, which is I think a pretty novel idea and so incredibly important. So I'm just really impressed with that work.

Eve: And I'm so happy you said that because obviously we think neuroscience is a very powerful tool for us to understand ourselves and each other and everybody. But by breaking down those barriers, we also get to have this very reciprocal relationship.

So you're right that I was primarily talking about what we bring to the community, but we have received a wealth in return. And so we have learned from some of our partners that they needed consultation on what is it do to the brain the stress of being around gun violence. So we will help them and write a white paper.

So it is also learning what is needed. We've also shared what does it mean to have a sense of purpose and how does that map onto how we use our brains and think about our future. And we have had just, yes, wonderful interactions with our communities.

Maureen: Yeah, so incredibly impactful. And I guess in that work — this might be a difficult question to answer — but I was curious if there was anything in particular that surprised you in that work?

Eve: The first time we piloted this program, we were doing it to really get our students to understand themselves, but what we learned is that there was also a benefit to their academics. And we happened to be piloting it in a charter school that did monthly assessments of reading and writing.

And we found out that the students that were at the lower end of achievement were brought up to the levels with their peers. And that's actually how we went to the New York State Education Department to share these, you know, what we thought was really exciting news.

And they're like, this is so exciting that we want you to really embed this in with our teachers. And the idea is that our teachers then have even more influence and can have even more impact on all of our future students and hopefully future scientists.

(21:06) Redesigning academic experiences through technological transformation and generative AI

Maureen: Yeah, and what I find so really exciting about the program it seems too is that — a question I had for you and I know this is kind of a difficult question — but if it was up to you and you could redesign one academic experience to be more neuroinclusive — right?

And it could be anything, it could be, you know, how do we change how we hold office hours or access more tools or mentors or rethinking multimodal lectures or sensory friendly spaces or labs or project-based learning — what would you prioritize? Like if it was up to you, what would you change first and why?

Eve: I think in light of our future, there's such a transformation and a rapid change that we all are going to be confronted with. Technological change that's happening. And I think we have to anticipate how it's going to affect each of us differently.

And so we don't want to be fearful of that technological change. So we have to really prepare — not only prepare our students for their future work — but I think currently in their education, are there ways that we need to be aware of maybe generative artificial intelligence would be a path to support neurodivergent students? Maybe it can serve students in a way that human interactions cannot.

So I would say if I was going to spend my time thinking about what's the next thing and how how can that interact with neurodiversity and how can it be used in a way to support neurodivergent people? And I'll give an example. I learned recently that when everybody gets discharged from a hospital, they always have all these instructions that you have to follow. And sometimes we comply, sometimes we don't. Or sometimes we understood what they said and sometimes we didn't.

And so your health outcome is contingent on your understanding of those discharge instructions. And so there are hospitals that are starting to use robots for discharge. And what they've learned is that they get better compliance and better understanding of those discharge instructions because people interacting with people sometimes they don't want to show that they don't understand.

And so what they found is with the robot, people would ask more questions or even the same question three times until they understood it. And so maybe thinking of something like that in our higher ed ecosystem. Like how can we use generative AI and be sensitive to how it might interact differently for each person? So how do we support their education that way? I think I would probably want to think in that space.

Maureen: That's very interesting. So going — moving from this one-size-fits-all, which you know started with the industrial age — and I think we're moving towards a more personalization and some of these emerging technologies could be helpful, right?

To augment individual difference, right? Where we can really appreciate and value individual differences and have a more nuanced or personalized approach to support. It sounds like that might be something for us to consider in the future.

So I think one of the questions I have is — you know, as far as I know, you yourself do not identify as neurodivergent. And yet you have shown so much leadership in pushing us to make higher education more neuroinclusive. And I'm curious like, why is that important to you? Is there anything in your own lived experience that makes you see the need for systemic change in this area, if you could maybe talk a little bit about that?

Eve: Well, I've never been diagnosed as neurodivergent, but I actually have grown up all my life assuming I am because I flip — I flip my letters and flip my numbers and it's just sort of a known. I remember being in kindergarten having to stay after school and practice my P's and my Q's and my B's and my D's.

So you know, I never saw myself as different, but I obviously would approach how I approach information and learning differently than others. I think the importance of people to be able to show up into a space authentically and to be able to with their authentic selves have an equal access to what's available. I don't think you need to be personally neurodivergent to really have that as a principle or or how you go through life.

Maureen: And I'm sure you've seen — I mean there's so many exceptional scholars at Cornell and other universities that don't have a diagnosis but that shouldn't matter, right? As humanity we need to kind of move in this direction where we need to collaborate, we need to solve problems, and really important work.

And I'm so excited we got to connect and have this conversation. It's so wonderful to see you and thank you so much for joining us today and looking forward to all the amazing work you're going to continue to do in this space.

Eve: This has been just a wonderful conversation. So thank you for that too.

Maureen: Thank you.

Nathan Friedman: You've been listening to "Conversations from Davos," a special season of "Minds at Work," hosted by Dr. Maureen Dunne and brought to you by Understood.org and the "Davos Neurodiversity Summit." If you want to know more about our guest today, please check out the show notes.

For those looking for resources to better advocate for themselves and others at work, visit u.org/work. And to learn more about the summit and Dr. Maureen Dunne, visit davosneurodiversitysummit.com.

"Minds at Work" is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to support our work, please donate at understood.org/give.

This show is produced by Julie Subrin, Alison Hochlander, Max McKenzie, and me, Nathan Friedman. This show is mixed by Justin D. Wright. Briana Berry is our production director and Laura Key is our executive director.

"Conversations from Davos" was produced in collaboration with the "Davos Neurodiversity Summit." Each year alongside the "World Economic Forum," leaders gather at DNS to explore how empathy and human-centered design can reshape work, education, and our key institutions. To support DNS 2027, go to davosneurodiversitysummit.com. Please join us next time. We'll continue unpacking the most important themes from this year's summit to shape a more inclusive and creative future. And thank you so much for listening.