|
|
 |
Return to top
Gene Chelberg, the new director of the Disability Resource Center (DRC), comes to SFSU after 14 years at the University of Minnesota as a student, activist and employee. The cross-country move is the culmination of a career that began when he first stepped onto the Minnesota campus as an undergraduate student.
Chelberg, who is visually impaired, didn't go to the University of Minnesota with the intention of becoming a campus leader, but while there he became involved with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) community. He was interested in exploring issues relating to his identity as a gay man. But the more he explored GLBT issues, the more he realized that his blindness was also an important part of who he was. With that realization, says Chelberg, "all the various identities began playing leapfrog with each other."
Drawing on the work of the GLBT community as well as the broader U.S. movement in disability awareness, Chelberg and other disabled students decided to organize themselves.
"We were claiming disability as an identity and not as a deficit to be overcome," Chelberg says. "We were looking for a place where we might find some connection and resonance in our experience."
The students were successful in their efforts, and together they founded the Disabled Student Cultural Center on campus. Chelberg's work at the center both in founding it and also as a staff member led to a position with Disability Resource Services at Minnesota, where he eventually became an assistant director.
Along the way Chelberg was also involved in organizing national and regional leadership conferences for disability activists and service providers, including one that brought him to the SFSU campus in 1995. The introduction to this campus as well as his professional relationship with SFSU history Professor Paul Longmore, a leading scholar in the emerging field of disability studies, planted the idea that this might be a good place for him should the opportunity arise.
After completing a two-year, intensive, summer executive master's program at the University of San Francisco in management and disability services, the stage was set. "When the position [as director of DRC] opened up, I already had a sense of San Francisco State as a place where I'd be interested in continuing my work," Chelberg says.
Longmore explains that SFSU was happy to see him apply: "Gene has comprehensive experience of disability issues, a national reputation, and a gift for dealing with people. He's exactly the right person to help SFSU become a model of dealing with disability as a diversity issue in higher education."
Chelberg, who began work in early July, says that his first priority has been to engage people on campus in dialogue, especially the students, faculty and staff members who use the center's services. "What is the story behind disability services at SFSU?" he asks. "That story will inform what directions I will work to move DRC in. Some of that's clearly mandated by federal law and University policy, but I also want to look beyond the mandates and focus on the spirit that create those laws."
Mainly, though, he wants to make sure that he and his staff are not acting in isolation, an attitude born out of his time at Minnesota. "How are the experiences of people with disabilities changed or impacted by their other cultural influences? By attempting to answer that question, we speak to a larger part of the disability community." To that end, Chelberg hopes to develop closer ties to other campus groups.
Chelberg brought a memento with him from the University of Minnesota. A quilted wall hanging, made for him by his co-workers at Disability Resource Services, displays square panels taken from three T-shirts that represent Chelberg's time with the Disabled Student Cultural Center. The center panel, in a twist of the Star Trek motto, reads: "To boldly go where all others have gone before." It's a statement about accessibility and equal treatment born out of disability activism.
But it also represents the bold and humorous spirit that Chelberg brings to his work in disability services-a spirit that will serve him well at SFSU.
-William Morris
Return to September First Monday
Return to First Monday Archive
SFSU, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
Last modified September 10, 2001, by Webmaster & Co.