It's the 3rd Give Day for WWU Institute for Critical Disability Studies (ICDS)
Help us celebrate our very first graduating cohort this year and many more to come by supporting our current and future students and programs this WWU Give Day!
Three ICDS Funds you can support!
You can choose the fund(s) to contribute to:
- General Scholarship Fund
- Special Events Fund
- Institute for Critical Disability Studies Fund (our general foundation fund)
Double your gift with the ICDS Scholarship Challenge!
For Give Day 2025, we are excited to announce a Give Day ICDS Scholarship Challenge generously sponsored by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. For every $100 donated to any ICDS fund on Give Day, our donor has committed to contribute $100 to the ICDS General Scholarship Fund, up to $1000!
ICDS is grateful to the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe for their generous gift to support this year's ICDS Scholarship Challenge
About our ICDS Special Funds
Directly support students through the ICDS General Scholarship Fund
ICDS supports our undergraduate and graduate students directly with scholarships. This year, we began offering two new scholarships for ICDS Minors through our General Scholarship Fund, joining our Mark West Scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students. Your gift to the ICDS General Scholarship Fund helps us continue to offer Give Day-funded General Scholarships and support more students by increasing both the award amount and the number of scholarships we can offer!
Help the ICDS offer more free and open accessible public events through the ICDS Special Events Fund
Contributing to the Special Events Fund will help offset costs of our events and programming, such as hiring sign interpreters, so that we can offer fully accessible events that are also free and open to the public.
Learn about the ICDS
The ICDS is a new institute at Western Washington University that officially launched in Spring 2022! Since then, we haven't stopped making waves at Western. Over the last year, we have added even more interdisciplinary DISA courses and our interdisciplinary minor in Critical Disability Studies is officially graduating our first cohort of Minors!
Help us continue our mission by supporting us this Give Day. Your gift can even directly support our students through our new ICDS Scholarships, which are crowdfunded annually by our Give Day Donors!
Find out more about what the Institute for Critical Disability Studies Does for Students, directly from our undergraduate and graduate students:
In 2023, we launched our Minor in Critical Disability Studies and created our first DISA courses! The ICDS marked this milestone with a cake and celebration at the end of Winter quarter 2023.
WWU ICDS: Growing a Disability Studies and Action Collaborative
The ICDS represents a group of students, faculty, and staff committed to engaging with disability through an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and collaborative approach. Funding the ICDS will help us put on programs and initiatives around campus and beyond.
Our projects include:
- Building an academic program with courses in Critical Disability Studies (DISA) and a Minor in Critical Disability Studies (CDS)
- Hosting interdisciplinary events including UnConferences and workshops that bring together Western and the local community
- Serving as a regional hub to bring cutting-edge Disability Studies scholars and Disability Justice activists to Western for presentations and lectures
- Supporting Students with:
- Scholarships
- Mentorship and direct Institute involvement
- Employment & Teaching Assistant opportunities
- Internships (in development)
- Professional Development programming for Faculty and Staff
- Fellows Program for faculty, staff, and community members to support disability scholarship and advocacy projects
- Cross-departmental collaborations centering intersectional inclusion, access, disability advocacy, and Universal Design
Many of our projects and initiatives directly benefit students, allowing them to bring together their academic interests to collaborate on topics relevant to the broader community. We hope to also grow our capacity to hire undergraduate and graduate students to participate in our initiatives as teaching assistants, committee members, and event and program support while gaining valuable experience engaging with disability, culture, and advocacy.
ICDS Impact: Western Students and Beyond
"Critical Disability Studies Institute became another space for me to honor my work of the past, present, and future in both the institute and my own timeline. From being a passive volunteer in the 2019 UnConference, to a re-imagined active participant running a workshop in 2022, and now a part of the first co-hort of the Fellows Program."
- JZY, WWU Alum ('22) & ICDS Fellow (2023 Cohort)
About our Mission
The mission of the ICDS is to promote the academic field of Critical Disability Studies, to foster discourse around accessible teaching and scholarship, and to engage with the campus and local community around issues of disability, accessibility, and culture. The Institute’s core components include:
- Academic Programming
- Building Community
- Collective Action
How to Contact ICDS
Questions? Contact the Institute co-directors at: ICDS@wwu.edu
Visit our webpage and learn more here.
