Last weekend, the new Director of Student Accessibility Services Erin Williams Benson made the over 1,000-mile road trip to Providence from her lifelong home in Athens, Georgia. Although she began her role on Oct. 13, Monday marked Benson’s first in-person day as director of Student Accessibility Services.
Benson succeeds Allen Kropp, who was serving in the role in an interim capacity.
Benson said that one of her biggest goals as director is to create more inclusive architecture on campus, including ramps and curb cuts. “The more we can think about design on the front end,” she said, the fewer “barriers that (students) experience.”
In her previous role as director of accessibility and testing at the University of Georgia, Benson put an emphasis on student advocacy. “When students are advocating for themselves or getting comfortable talking to their professors about an accommodation, they’re really developing leadership skills that are transferable out into the world,” she said.
She hopes that students will feel comfortable reaching out to her to discuss anything on their mind. “I’ll even buy you a coffee,” she said.
Showing up for students is a good way to begin building relationships with them, she said. “I want to go to different events. I want students to see me in different spaces and know that if they want to come up and talk to me they can,” she said.
Benson comes to Brown as the University is shifting to a new platform for accommodations. The Herald previously reported that some students were not satisfied with the design of the new platform.
“There’s always growing pains,” Benson said, adding she is excited to work with the new “more modern database.”
Before her move to Providence, Benson had only ever lived in Athens, Georgia. She has three degrees from the UGA: a bachelor’s in anthropology, a master’s in public administration and policy and a doctorate in learning, leadership and organizational development.
While completing her master’s and doctorate, Benson also worked full-time at the University of North Georgia and the UGA.
In both roles, Benson worked closely with students with disabilities. She said she aimed to create a “welcoming environment where students feel like they belong and they have access to what they need.”
“Disability has been something that’s been a part of my life since I was a kid,” Benson said.
Benson’s childhood best friend used a wheelchair for mobility. When they were younger, the two wanted to go to playgrounds, which they found to be inaccessible. As preteens, they wanted to go to different stores in historical buildings, which were also inaccessible.
“From a very early age, I started really looking at how we design spaces,” she said.
She takes this perspective into the workplace and tries to “address the barriers that we as society create unintentionally or intentionally.”
Benson conducted an action project at the UGA with a team investigating how to improve the school’s accessibility policies to examine how to go from being a “reactionary” institution to a “proactive” institution. She focused on “universal and inclusive design” that incorporates “peripheral needs.”
During her research, her team found that the university’s faculty did not often get direct training for working with students with disabilities. She then created various asynchronous and synchronous resources to accommodate different faculty learning styles.
Benson also participated in the Mandela Washington Fellowship at the UGA, where she supported young African leaders with interests in accessibility and disability. The fellowship brought her to Sierra Leone and Nigeria where she focused on raising awareness on accessibility for higher education administrators and developing universal design strategies.
“When it’s not on your radar, it’s not something that you necessarily think of on the front end,” she said.
In her role, Benson hopes students know “that we are a resource for them,” she said.
“Brown aligns with my values,” Benson said. “Everybody is here for the right reasons. We’re here for the students.”
Tyler Timmers is a senior staff writer covering undergraduate student life.
