eSight Community News

Technology Requirements:
Full participation in this web conference series requires access to email, a telephone line and a computer with internet access. A high speed internet connection is recommended but not required. The webinar will be captioned for the hearing impaired.

Presenters:
MELISSA J. BJELLAND, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations Extension Division. She is currently the Project Manager of an employment disability nondiscrimination study using the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions Integrated Mission System. Dr. Bjelland additionally serves as Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director in examining the impact of environmental factors on disability and the decision to work using the American Community Survey. In this capacity, she works with teams to plan and conduct analyses of cross-sectional and longitudinal research files using national survey and administrative datasets to evaluate the impact of changes in policies that advance the employment of people with disabilities.

RAYMOND CEBULA III, JD, is a member of the Extension Faculty of Cornell University’s Employment and Disability Institute. As a faculty member, he has provided technical assistance and training to Protection and Advocacy program attorneys and paralegals in 16 states and territories covered by Cornell’s Work Incentive Support Center and written extensively on matters of concern to disabled individuals who are attempting to return to work. He is the principal instructor of EDI Online; a series of Social Security related certificate courses offered by the Institute. As an experienced social security disability attorney Mr. Cebula practiced with the Disability Benefits Project as a Senior Staff Attorney with the Disability Law Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He has also served as a Managing Attorney of the Disability and Medicare projects at Southeastern Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation. He is a graduate of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH and received a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship upon graduation. He is also a graduate of Merrimack College and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. His practice has concentrated in the area of social security practice and has brought several pieces of significant litigation on behalf of low income, disabled social security beneficiaries. While working with the Disability Law Center, Mr. Cebula taught at Harvard Law Schools Legal Aid Bureau for a period of three academic years. He is the co-author of the MCLE publication An Advocates Guide to Surviving the SSI System, several SSI practice manuals published by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, and an extensive listing of Policy and Practice Briefs housed in the ILR School Library. He is a regular presenter of social security related programs at local and national conferences of social security practitioners.

BILL ERICKSON, MS, is a Research Specialist with the Employment and Disability Institute (EDI) at Cornell University and has been actively involved with disability research for the past seven years. Since 2003 he has been providing high quality Technical Assistance regarding a wide variety of disability statistics for the Cornell University Disability Demographics and Statistics RRTC. He was the project manager for the 2006 Disability Status Report series and developed all the estimates used in the 2005 and 2006 Status reports. He is the coauthor of A Guide to Disability Statistics from the 2000 Decennial Census and has worked extensively with the American Community Survey Public Use Microdata files. He has Census Bureau Special Sworn Status that allowed him to perform analysis on US Census Bureau restricted datasets of Census 2000 and the ACS 2000-2005 under a NIDDR funded FIR. He is intimately involved in design and content of DisabilityStatistics.org and developed the Census 2000 data available on that site. He is co-PI and Project Manager of a NIDDR funded Project regarding web accessibility and usability for persons with disabilities and has been responsible for the management and analysis of several disability related surveys of federal and private employers.

THOMAS P. GOLDEN, MS, CRC, is the Associate Director of the Employment and Disability Institute in the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University and has been on faculty since 1991. As a faculty member he has been a contributor to the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for Economic Research on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities and the Disability STATS RRTC at Cornell sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). Partly in his capacity with the RRTC he has trained and disseminated relevant information and statistical data nationally and internationally co-authoring the foundation paper for a joint U.S.-U.K. symposium sponsored by the Department of Labor focusing on a comparative analysis of return to work best practices with an emphasis on evidence-based research and prevalence statistics and most recently a few book chapters building off this work. In addition, he has directed the Center for Educational Achievement and Training, the Work Incentives Support Center and several other state initiatives focusing on community participation and inclusion of people with disabilities.

Registration (deadline 5/14/08)

A confirmation letter will be sent via e-mail at least one week prior to the web conference giving you the directions on how to access the information needed to join the webinar.

Materials access directions will be sent under separate cover in a confirmation letter two weeks prior to the webinar.

Please Note: Materials for this program will be disseminated electronically. If alternative formats are requested, please provide your request to Cornell no later than four business days before the web conference.

For questions or assistance, please contact:
Melissa Burress, Cornell University
Employment and Disability Institute
201 ILR Ext. Bldg., Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: 607-255-7727 Fax: 607-255-2763
Email: mb376@cornell.edu