Nashman Spotlights: Dr. Sean Cleary Receives Transform Mid-Atlantic Award

Dr. Sean Cleary, associate professor in the School of Public Health, received the 2022 Transform Mid-Atlantic's Campus-Community Partnership Award. This award honors the partnership between Dr. Cleary, local autistic young adults, and several service providing organizations, including Our Stomping Ground. Years of collaboration have resulted in a popular GW course, PUBH 6232: The Autism Experience from a Public Health Perspective, and Community Based Participatory Research by faculty, students, and community partners. This work engages students in direct service-learning opportunities as well as CBPR and advocacy projects, all while respecting community members with autism as experts on their lived experience and advocates for change.

Dr. Cleary is working with The Tribe, a group of young adult autistics, along with their families, their therapists from Growing Kids Therapy Center, and community advocates from Our Stomping Ground. The first success of this partnership, supported by a small grant from GW’s Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, is the development of Dr. Cleary’s course at GW, PUBH 6299: The Autism Experience: A Public Health Perspective. The Tribe worked with Dr. Cleary over the course of a year to have input in the content and design of the course. These young adults with autism, most speaking through letter boards and other communication technology, now attend the class regularly as participants. GW students learn from these community members through small group discussions of issues such as education, employment, independent living, healthcare, and family support.

The course design process began in 2018, with Dr. Cleary and The Tribe meeting regularly to discuss the syllabus topics and the feasibility of their involvement in the in-class discussions. The course has been offered annually since 2019 and will continue indefinitely. Plans to grow this partnership now extend to Dr. Cleary’s research, with all partners involved in the planning the focus of the inquiry. The key research questions will address the gap in the literature for adults with autism (over 90% of current research studies are focused on youth). The student-community partnerships are sustained as well. GW students and members of The Tribe frequently go to dinner together after class. Many attend weekly yoga classes at GW together.

Measuring the value of social experience and confidence-building for nonspeaking Autistics who hope to achieve independent living is difficult to do with numbers. But we do have a wealth of anecdotal feedback, from both staff in community serving organizations (see the attached recommendation letter) and from autistic members of the community. One member of The Tribe who helped design the class and participated in its implementation shared, “I am personally quite social but my autism gets in the way of connecting with others. I present as quite weird and most people would have no idea how muchI crave their friendship. I really appreciate the new friends I have made through this class.”

A GW student from the course shared this reflection,“Perhaps my most favorite part of the last class was when we split up into groups and [completed an activity that parallels challenges associated with apraxia]..... The autistic students shared with me that my frustration is something that they encounter regularly, and for me to only have a short-lived experience on such a miniscule scale leaves me at a loss of words for what nonspeaking autistic individuals confront every day. Essentially, this class has piqued my curiosity about the limitless potential of the autistic students and I am excited to learn with them in the future and refine my own understanding that intelligence or behavior should never be treated as a one-dimensional construct.”

Donna Tonini Budway, the Volunteer/Intern Coordinator with Specially Adapted Resource Club (SPARC) where many of Cleary's students volunteer shared the following:

Participating in the course at GW has had a tangible impact on the 15 non-speaking autistic young adults that were invited to participate in the course. From the beginning, the young adults were involved in the development of the course through a series of meetings to decide on topics to be covered and which sessions they would like to attend. Topics selected were of great relevance and interest to our community, e.g. housing, employment, current research and perspectives of autism around the world. In addition to the classroom lectures and opportunity to participate, our students were also encouraged to dive into the curriculum and assignments with the GWU students. Weekly readings and the invitation to blog and discuss the topics each week gave our autistic students a unique opportunity to share their insights and experiences with their neurotypical peers.

One extraordinary outcome from the course was the engagement the GWU students with our community outside of the classroom.... During spring break, one student arranged to take a group of the autistic students for a tour of the campus. Another student initiated an opportunity to receive training on the letterboard and other assistive technology utilized by this group of students. Not only has the participation of the GWU students greatly enhanced our classroom experience at SPARC, but the opportunity to be on campus and engage with the student body at GWU has been nothing short of life altering.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, participating in the course provided a voice for members of the community to be shared with the students and faculty, giving them influence on the direction of research that affects them. We are very grateful to have been part of this amazing collaboration. As one of the autistic students shared at the end of the semester in response to the student presentations, “I feel hopeful that there is an increased understanding of our population.”

Listen to a podcast about this course.

Some of Dr. Cleary's students have received community engaged scholarship awards of their own:

Aiswarya Bulusu, second place winner of the 2019 Nashman Prize for Community Based Participatory Research: "Dental health assessment in autistic youth: Results from a national study of children’s health"
Carly Cox, winner of the Fall 2020 Symposium on Community Engaged Scholarship Audience Choice Award: "How the Mental Health system Can Better Serve Young Adults with Autism"
Sydney Bornstein, recipient of the Fall 2020 Symposium Exemplar Award: "Transition to Adult Healthcare Among Non-Speaking Autistic Young Adults"