The DREAM Student Advisory Board

Board members meet online monthly through a method that is accessible for all members to plan DREAM activities and discuss issues of interest to students who are disabled, Deaf, and/or chronically ill.

Are you a student who'd like to share an issue or collaborate with the DREAM Board? Contact us at DREAM@ahead.org 

DREAM BOARD 2021-2022 (Applications Forthcoming)

Val Erwin 
Bowling Green State University (OH)

Val Erwin is a third-year PHD student in Higher Education at Bowling Green State University. She identifies as autistic, dyslexic, and someone with multiple mental illnesses.  She has an assistantship as a research assistant focusing on disabled college students.  She was formerly the program advisor at the Women & LGBT Center for Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her interests span the intersections of disability, gender, sexuality, and sexual violence with college students and broadly college access for underrepresented students. She has her Masters in Higher Education from Iowa State University and her Bachelors in History from Michigan State University. She has been a volunteer with the Michigan Disabilities Rights Coalition for the last twelve years focusing on women, youth, education, and leadership. She has in the past advised disability student organizations and was the president of her undergraduate disability group. 

Sage Marie Desovich
Elms College

Sage Marie Desovich is an undergraduate student in Social Work at Elms College. She has an associates degree in Human Services from Asnuntuck Community College as well. She identifies as disabled as well as someone with mental illnesses. She enjoys fiber crafts, reading and making jewelry in her spare time. 

Sage Marie became involved in the disability community when she entered college and found other disabled students on campus as well as on an online community. Through this she became interested in forming a community of other students on campus where they could meet, discuss any issues they’re facing, and get support from one another. 

She founded the Student Disability Advocacy Club, an affiliate of DREAM, at Asnuntuck Community College and was the president for three years. Two major events with SDAC included organizing a bathroom accessibility audit and a wheelchair challenge involving the Dean of Students to highlight the inaccessibility on campus. She worked to connect ACC with it’s sister school of Manchester Community College and assisted with mental health awareness through Fresh Check Day. Also at her time at Asnuntuck, Sage Marie was involved as a note taker for the Disability Services Office, was a student representative on the Quiet Reflection Room Committee, was a Senator in Student Government, and was the intern for the Wellness Center and Pantry at ACC. ​

Currently, Sage Marie is the intern at the Student Accommodations and Support Services office at Elms College. She created multiple guides for professors and staff for information on how to make distance learning accessible on multiple platforms. In the future Sage Marie wants to work as a director in a college disability services office. Her main goal is to increase the accessibility of higher education and the accommodations process for students with disabilities.

Gabriella Garbero (Co-Chair)
Saint Louis University School of Law

Gabriella Garbero is a third year law student at Saint Louis University School of Law. Since soon after beginning law school, she has worked as a faculty fellow performing research and learning about the complexities of disability law, health law, and bioethics. She is also Technical Managing Editor for the SLU Journal of Health Law and Policy, and her student article, "Impossible Choices, Improbable Odds: Disability and the Right to Marry" was one of four student articles chosen to be published during the 2020–2021 school year. Gabriella also co-authored an article called "Sex-Based Discrimination in Healthcare Under Section 1557: The New Final Rule and Supreme Court Developments" that was featured in The Health Lawyer. When she graduates, she will earn a J.D. with a Health Law concentration and she plans to use her degree to help advocate for people with disabilities. Outside of school, Gabriella runs a blog called The Girl Who Sits where she talks about disability issues, and she enjoys participating in disability advocacy and activism wherever she can. In her spare time, she enjoys politics, scary movies, and spending time with her family and her dogs. At thirteen months old, Gabriella was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type Two. SMA, as it is popularly known, is a neuromuscular disease that manifests in general muscle weakness and fatigue, and has caused Gabriella to use a wheelchair since she was about two years old. Through her disability, Gabriella learned from a young age to be a fierce advocate for herself and others and to use her communication skills to teach the people around her.

Rebecca-Eli Long
Purdue University
 Twitter
Rebecca-Eli Long is a multiply-disabled anthropologist and activist interested in social movements, structural violence, and creativity. Rebecca-Eli is currently a Ph.D. student at Purdue University in the Department of Anthropology and Center on Aging and the Life Course. Rebecca-Eli’s dissertation research uses their own special interest of knitting to examine autistic special interests and sensory differences. Rebecca-Eli also has a Masters degree in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University. During their M.A. research, they became interested in how disability relates to social movements in Appalachia, including labor organizing, environmental justice, and queer activism. Rebecca-Eli is slowly working on a book manuscript to explore this further. While at Appalachian State University, they also became involved in campus-based activism. Following their participation in the Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s Campus Inclusion program, they led multiple student groups, organized events, and worked to bring attention to the shortcomings in available resources for disabled students on their campus.

Stephanie Polito
My name is Stephanie E Polito and I am 28 years old. I currently live in Mashpee, Massachusetts in a supported living community.  I am a preschool assistant teacher and I work in a daycare in West Barnstable, Massachusetts.  I have an intellectual disability and also low muscle tone.  I attended Riverview School in East Sandwich, Massachusetts and also was a student at Project Forward at Cape Cod Community College.  I'm a member of a organization called Easter Seals and I'm a self advocate for people with disabilities. I'm a part of a teach disability history group to promote why its very important to teach disability history in schools. I have a lot of  background history in the disability rights movement.

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Jeff Edelstein
​University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Email     LinkedIn     Twitter
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Jeff Edelstein is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Higher Education program at UMass Amherst and a graduate research assistant for the UMass Center for Student Success Research . He has been researching the experiences of disabled students in higher education for over 7 years and is particularly interested in disability identity development and disabled community building in postsecondary education. They have presented research on the experiences of disabled students in higher education at the annual conferences for the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the International Society for Autism Research, and the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. He has a B.A. in Music and a B.S. in Management Information Systems from Florida State University, where he co-founded the College Autism Network, and an M.A. in Higher Education from the University of Michigan, where he co-founded the disability advocacy collective, Disability Culture @ UM. At UMass Amherst, they serve as a member of the Alliance Against Ableism and provide ableism awareness training to campus community members while building in disabled community on campus. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys spending time with his partner, Nad, their guinea pigs, reading graphic novels, and listening to podcasts. 

DREAM Advisor

Wendy Harbour - Director of the National Center for College Students with Disabilities