After many months of negotiations with the Ruderman Family Foundation, the University will accept a monetary award from the foundation in order to further work in disability policy at Brandeis. Jay Ruderman '88, an alumnus who heads his family's foundation, visited campus on Thursday to meet with Prof. Susan Parish (Heller) and two students whose work the award will benefit.

Acting Director of the Corporate Foundational Relations Office in the Office of Development Richard Levitt introduced Parish and the students who were awarded the fellowship this year, Ruth Zeilicovich '14 and Danielle Sackstein '14, to Ruderman at a morning meeting, which was followed by a luncheon with Sharon Ruderman, a trustee of the foundation, and Elizabeth Zwick, the administrator of the foundation.

"After many, many months of negotiations with the Ruderman Family Foundation... they made a very generous award of $450,000 over four years to support, in large part, the work of Dr. Parish, primarily to cultivate among undergraduates a deeper understanding, appreciation and engagement with disability policy," said Levitt at the morning meeting.

Ruderman, who graduated with majors in Politics and African and Afro-American Studies, served as Student Union president during the 1987 to 1988 academic year. "Now I run the family foundation, which is based ... in Newton[, Mass.] and also in Israel," he said at the meeting. "Our focus is the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish community, globally."

Parish commented on her excitement at the University's reception of the award, detailing that the money will be used to fund scholarships as well as a research assistantship in disability policy for the students chosen. In addition to new courses being developed in disability at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, the award will provide support for stipends for students to intern with community organizations that work in the field of disability policy, she said. "To the best of our knowledge, it's the only program of its kind for undergrad[uates] in the United States. We're really excited to have this. Brandeis has a really long history of distinguished leadership in disability," said Parish.

Ruderman and Parish met a couple years ago, said Ruderman, and he was impressed with her work and national impact. "That led to a number of discussions, and one of the needs that we spoke about was to develop a cadre of students that would pursue this area and make a career based on the inclusion of people with disabilities," he said.

Parish has been working with Zeilicovich and Sackstein to complete an intervention program for caregivers to women with intellectual disabilities, an effort that is in line with the Ruderman Family Foundation's values, she expressed. After their introduction, Ruderman asked the students about the details of their project.

Sackstein began, telling Ruderman that what they are focused on is "an intervention to educate and empower caregivers to women with disabilities." The two have been developing an interactive online tool, complete with articles as well as dialogue, video and audio components, to make caregivers "feel like they are empowered, informed and capable of advocating for the needs of women with disabilities, and in particular, for the women that they represent," said Sackstein.

"The project is part of Dr. Parish's Women Be Healthy research campaign. It's research for women with intellectual disability," Zeilicovich continued, noting that, often times, doctors neglect to offer preventative screenings to women with disabilities. Parish added that a study she conducted in the past year with a sampling of female patients from North Carolina corroborated this claim. Zeilicovich said that the intervention program they are developing aims to "increase awareness of cervical and breast cancer and how preventable it is now, and to educate these women about the cancers and how to prevent them through screenings, [as well as] how to educate them to advocate for themselves."

Ruderman remains optimistic about the relationship between the foundation and Brandeis. He told Zeilicovich and Sackstein, "I think substance is investing in scholarship ... the sky is the limit in where you guys go, and the impact that you guys can have in society."