
The CARD Collaborative Working Group met on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, at the Chez Veterans Center. The meeting was hosted by Michael Lotspeich-Yadao, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of Research and Educational Programing at Chez. Michael was joined by CARD member Andy Bender, Chez Director of Operations and Services and two University students who gave CARD members a moving tour of the Center.
After the tour, the group gathered for a lunch meeting where Dr. Lotspeich-Yadao presented on a pending case management program that Chez is implementing called TRiO Student Support Services (Veterans) Program. The program is designed to address the unique needs of military-connected students who are low-income, first-generation, and/or have disabilities, with the goal of enhancing their persistence, academic performance, and graduation rates. It is hopeful the program will serve and average of 279 eligible students each year under SSS-V.
The lightening round presentations started with Heather Stout, MS, CRC, Director of Operations and Services of Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES). Heather led a discussion on how best to be proactive to the need of an increased number of students with disabilities requiring University accommodations. Heather was followed by Samuel Olatunji Ph.D., Post-doctoral Research Associate, Human Factors and Aging Laboratory (HFA) and McKechnie Family LIFE Home who posed questions to the group on how to design robot teams to support health and wellness, advance foundational knowledge, refine the capabilities of these robots, and engage the users when building human-robot teams. Questions and feedback were shared by the group and the meeting presented opportunities for collaborations between group members.
Thank you to everyone who were able to join our meeting. There will be two more CARD Collaborative Working Group meetings will be in the Spring semester, 2025. Please look for an email asking for your availability to these meetings. We will meet during a time that works best for the most members. If you would like to host the meeting in your lab and/or be a presenter please email the CARD administrative team. Let us know if you have any questions. Hope to see you at our next meeting!