UCC Disabilities Ministries

2. Which UCC seminary did you attend?

3. During what years were you a student?

4. What is your birth date:

5. What degree program were you in?

6. Did you graduate? Yes No Still enrolled

7. When you entered the seminary, what was your career goal?
local church ministry teaching
pastoral counseling chaplaincy
other (please explain)

8. When you applied, did you inform the seminary that you had a disability?
- Yes No Don’t remember

9. Did you request any special accommodation related to your disability when you enrolled or began classes?
No Yes
(If yes, what accommodation did you request and did the seminary provide that
accommodation?)

10. While you were a student at the seminary did you find the buildings and grounds of the seminary to be accessible to you?
not at all only a little to some degree
mostly accessible totally accessible

11. Did you find the teaching methods used by faculty and/or technologies employed in the classroom supportive of your accessibility needs?
. . not at all only a little to some degree
mostly accessible - totally accessible

12. Was seminary housing suitable or adapted for a person with your disability?
Yes No Don’t know

13. Beyond the classroom, were seminary programs, such as community worship, special
lectures, or student activities, accessible to you?
not at all only a little to some degree
mostly accessible totally accessible

14. Were you aware of other people with disabilities in the seminary community?
Yes No

15. When you attended the seminary did it offer specific courses related to disability issues?
Yes No Don’t know (or don’t remember)

If you answered “‘yes,” in what areas of the curriculum were the courses offered? (Check any/all that apply.)
Pastoral ministry Old or New Testament
Pastoral counseling - Christian Education
Ethics Other(?)

16. From your experiences in seminary, what approach(es) were taken to disability issues?
(Check any/all that apply.)
As punishment for sin
As a test of faith
As opportunities for God’s intervention
As opportunities for growth and learning
As examples of redemptive suffering
As examples of God’s mysterious omnipotence
As examples of the interdependence of the universe
As opportunities for Christian community
Other(?)

17. Did you seek employment related to your seminary training after graduation?
Yes No Already had employment

If you answered yes, how much difficulty did you have finding employment?

18. Please share any other comments or specific experiences that you had as a seminary student that might help us understand your experiences as a seminary student with a disability.

We are asking respondents to identify themselves so that we might be able to follow up with questions. However, you may reply anonymously if you prefer. No use of the data collected will identify individuals. The report will include identified experiences of a handful of individuals who will be interviewed directly for this purpose.

In the fall of 1999, a letter from David Denham was sent to each of the 14 seminaries explaining the study and inviting their participation. Those 14 seminaries are Andover-Newton Theological School, Bangor Theological Seminary, Chicago Theological Seminary, Eden Theological Seminary, Hartford Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, Howard University School of Divinity, The Interdenominational Theological Center, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Pacific School of Religion, Union Theological Seminary, United Theological Seminary, The Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, and Yale Divinity School. Almost all of the seminaries are participating in the study. Bangor Seminary declined to participate, and Howard has not responded to letters, phone calls, or e-mail communication. Therefore, final results will include six directly-related and six affiliated seminaries.

A pilot study was done last fall at Princeton Seminary, and data from that study was used to revise the questionnaires used in the actual study. Princeton had been through a year-long analysis by an architectural firm of its facilities related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and those findings were made available to our researcher. Our study is considering not only the facilities of each seminary, but also current and recent past enrolled students who have identified themselves as having a disability. It also involves a questionnaire distributed to full-time faculty asking them about their personal experiences with individuals who have a disability in their classes, and it looks for specific recent books about individuals with disabilities — such as The Disabled God by Nancy Eiesland — in each seminary’s library. The researcher hopes to do an analysis of all the collected data over the summer and submit a final report to UCC Disabilities Ministries by fall 2000.

From UCC DM Newsletter Archive