Center's Dr. Laura Stough to Lead Discussion at Disaster Symposium

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS – Dr. Laura Stough of the Center on Disability and Development at Texas A&M University will join faculty members from over 10 Texas universities on Monday, Dec. 8 at Prairie View A&M University as part of a working symposium called "Childhoods, Education and Social Justice: Critical Studies of Cycles of Disaster."

Recent natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Ike have called attention to societal conditions that place particular groups of people in vulnerable circumstances even before tragic events occur. For those with the least power and resources, disastrous events reenact further conditions of risk and displacement. Children are one of these vulnerable groups when they are physically (e.g. loss of homes, neighborhoods), socially/emotionally (e.g. through hardships on families that lose work, child care, transportation and social services) and educationally displaced.

Faculty attending the symposium plan to create a Critical Academic Collaborative to serve as an academic group that will conduct both immediate response and long term research and work toward the creation of a critical public policy infrastructure that addresses equity, social justice and the avoidance of vulnerabilities for all children.

Discussion leaders will include Dr. Stough as well as Dr. Yvonna Lincoln of Texas A&M University; Gaile S. Cannella of Tulane University; and Donald R. Collins of Prairie A&M University.

For more information, contact Dr. Laura Stough at 979-845-8257 or lstough@tamu.edu.

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