By Abby Gan | Staff Writer
Since coming to Baylor from Vanderbilt University in January, Dr. Erik Carter has been working to promote a more inclusive environment for people with disabilities.
“Their faith and friendship is just as compelling and real and attractive as anyone else’s,” Carter said. “The way we gather in communities separates people — because of fear, because of attitudes, because of whatever. So that is now the running theme through all of the research I do: It’s how do you get people to be in community with one another in our schools, in our workplaces, in our churches, on our college campuses?”
After serving as a faculty member in Vanderbilt’s department of special education and leading the Center for Developmental Disabilities for more than a dozen years, Carter said he was drawn to Baylor by its Christian mission.
“The idea that a place would be committed to the very best research but animated by a faith … that sees people with disabilities in very different ways, as indispensable members of the community, as image bearers — to be in a place that … is committed to rigorous relevant research but wants to do that from a worldview that is redeeming and justice-focused and valuing people — got me just really excited,” Carter said.
Carter, who now serves as the Luther Sweet Endowed Chair in Disabilities, said there has been a lack of inclusion for those with developmental disabilities throughout history, and those barriers are still ingrained through things like architecture.
“For whatever reasons, we’ve designed our spaces in our places without all of our community in mind,” Carter said. “We have buildings that some people can’t get into and classrooms that some kids can’t participate in — curriculum that wasn’t designed with all kids in mind.”
As a result, Carter said he is creating strategies for how to enable everyone to be a part of everything that is offered in a community.
“We find more and more communities are saying, ‘We want to include kids with this development as well. We just don’t know how,’” Carter said. “So, our research is looking at, what are the kinds of practices that we can implement that support kids to be part of rigorous instruction or part of religious life? I think there’s also a line of work thinking about what kinds of policies do we have in place that create structural barriers to being part of what we offer? [We’re questioning] the … different policies we could advocate for that prime people to be thinking about serving all kids with all abilities or welcoming all families.”
When he was growing up, Carter said he didn’t encounter students with developmental disabilities very often because they were often separated into special education classrooms.
“Your lives didn’t really intersect with one another,” Carter said. “Even growing up, … when I got my first job in the community, I don’t remember seeing other young people with developmental disabilities working in community businesses and then going on to college. A lot of people grew up in a world that practically didn’t include other young people with developmental disabilities — or at least that’s how it seemed.”
In his freshman year of college, Carter said he stumbled upon an opportunity to work at an outdoor recreation program in Georgia that brought people with and without developmental disabilities together for a summer.
“Out of that experience, I met some other 18-year-olds with Down syndrome for the first time and developed some wonderful friendships with people I might not otherwise have met,” Carter said. “[I] just became enamored with those relationships and all the good things that come from life together in the community.”
However, friendships were not the only thing born that summer. Carter said others’ faith and love for the Lord gave him a “deep calling” to help other young people connect with their peers.
Dr. Kristen Padilla, director of the Baylor Center for Developmental Disabilities, said she remembers when Carter came to speak at Baylor in 2017 about his faith and disability initiative. She said it is obvious that the Christian mission is at the core of his work.
“Dr. Carter brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the School of Education, to the center and to the university,” Padilla said. “He really has a heart for individuals with disabilities and has a very unique way of learning about this population, supporting this population and creating projects and programs for this population that is integrated and leads to compelling scholarship.”
When he was younger, Carter said he thought the work needed to center around building the skills of those with developmental disabilities. Now, though, Carter said he is trying to change the attitudes and expectations of the communities, making them more accessible and hospitable.
“In other words, [I used to think] if we could help them learn the right skills and have the right knowledge and the right behaviors, then they could gain entry into a community,” Carter said. “I think very differently about that now. The work now is how do we change communities so that we are helping them expect that people with developmental studies will be a part of what they do?”
Carter said the Baylor Center for Developmental Disabilities is particularly excited to hear from students who want to be a part of this work. Those who are interested can email bcdd@baylor.edu.
