Comfort/Service animals in labs

[Caracal]

We're not in the job-training business; we're in the education business. We shouldn't be gatekeeping who gets to learn about microbiology based on whether we think our students have future careers in the field. And even if we were in the job-training business, there are loads of careers that students can have, which require (or benefit from) microbiology lab training, without requiring that they work in a lab.

Exactly. It does sound like it may not work to have a dog in this lab. I'm assuming IU has rules banning even trained ability dogs from Level 2 labs  because they've determined that the risks to the dog and everyone else is just too great. I think the OP would be on pretty solid footing if they cited that as a precedent along with their own determination about the real and unavoidable risks involved. There may or may not be an ADA issue at play but I think the same basic rule should apply, which is that whether accommodations are reasonable needs to be about the actual situation at hand, not a lot of assumptions about the person's condition and abilities.

[Caracal]

I also strongly disagree with our colleague Caracal, who had never mentioned either teaching a lab with safety concerns including having to deal with providing first aid and even transportation to the hospital, that the general education aspects trump all the safety aspects.  If the desire is to learn a general science with lab, there are far safer labs in which to bring an animal than microbiology.  Nobody's blocking anyone from attending lecture, but I will indeed be pushy about whether a comfort animal trumps my student's right to attend without the allergen aspect.

I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I don't have any expertise in this, so I'll defer to the OP and those who do. It sort of sounds to me like it isn't safe to have a dog in this lab. Obviously, that trumps everything else. You start getting into issues of discrimination and unfair treatment when you go beyond that to make a bunch of blanket assumptions about what people are fit for based on their perceived ability. The best way to avoid this is to take the questions one at a time.

1. Can a dog be in this lab?
2. If not, is there some reasonable way that the student could replace the lab component of the course with something else, or some different kind of lab?
3. If the answer to two is no, is this a required course for the degree?
4. If Yes, is it possible that something else could be substituted without compromising the integrity of the degree?

A broader conversation about how or whether any of this is going to work only applies if none of these questions produces an acceptable solution.

[marshwiggle]

We're not in the job-training business; we're in the education business. We shouldn't be gatekeeping who gets to learn about microbiology based on whether we think our students have future careers in the field. And even if we were in the job-training business, there are loads of careers that students can have, which require (or benefit from) microbiology lab training, without requiring that they work in a lab. For example:

1. Science teacher in school.
2. Science journalist
3. Program officer in a science funding agency
4. Research support admin at a university
5. Tech start-up dudebro trying to do tech things with lab results
6. Manufacturing lab equipment
7. Publishing lab textbooks
8. Editing science journals
9. Being an educated human being with knowledge and experience that goes beyond their immediate career applications.

None of those things require microbiology lab training.  I've never had microbiology lab education and yet I am qualified to hold those generic  positions by virtue of other scientific training.  Thus, the benefit to me seems pretty damn small if we're talking one microbiology lab on top of enough other scientific education to be truly qualified for those positions.  Hell, I am even an educated human being with knowledge and experience that goes way, way beyond my current career applications, which is one reason why I'm so skeptical that one microbiology lab is doing much of anything for anybody.  We're not short on general biologists at the bachelor's level or even, to the best of my knowledge, short on people who have had one or two microbiology labs.

The reason I included #9 in my list is because I strongly disagree with the premise that a student should "require" this type of training for jobs or whatever in order to take the class. Why are we even talking about it?  Let employers worry about jobs. We worry about educating. If it's possible to make the classroom accessible to this student, if it's possible to educate this student in a topic they want to learn about, then that's what we should do.

To the extent that some of our students will be employed where they will need this specifically, and their employers are counting on a university education in microbiology as being adequate preparation for it, we should avoid compromising the experience for the sake of the interest of the occasional unusual student.

Someone on the old fora talked about a blind student potentially taking a course in visual marketing. If accommodating that student would essentially require making the "visual" part insignificant, then it defeats the purpose.

As Polly said, if a person wants some sort of lab experience, there are lots of labs where the animal could be accommodated. (I'm not in biology or chemistry, so my labs would be fine with an animal. I'd be happy to work that out if it came up.) But having to change the nature of the labs in order to make it work (like removing pathogens, etc. to make it "safe" for the dog) would undermine the value of the educational experience for everyone.

[dr_codex]

We're not in the job-training business; we're in the education business. We shouldn't be gatekeeping who gets to learn about microbiology based on whether we think our students have future careers in the field. And even if we were in the job-training business, there are loads of careers that students can have, which require (or benefit from) microbiology lab training, without requiring that they work in a lab. For example:

1. Science teacher in school.
2. Science journalist
3. Program officer in a science funding agency
4. Research support admin at a university
5. Tech start-up dudebro trying to do tech things with lab results
6. Manufacturing lab equipment
7. Publishing lab textbooks
8. Editing science journals
9. Being an educated human being with knowledge and experience that goes beyond their immediate career applications.

None of those things require microbiology lab training.  I've never had microbiology lab education and yet I am qualified to hold those generic  positions by virtue of other scientific training.  Thus, the benefit to me seems pretty damn small if we're talking one microbiology lab on top of enough other scientific education to be truly qualified for those positions.  Hell, I am even an educated human being with knowledge and experience that goes way, way beyond my current career applications, which is one reason why I'm so skeptical that one microbiology lab is doing much of anything for anybody.  We're not short on general biologists at the bachelor's level or even, to the best of my knowledge, short on people who have had one or two microbiology labs.

I also strongly disagree with our colleague Caracal, who had never mentioned either teaching a lab with safety concerns including having to deal with providing first aid and even transportation to the hospital, that the general education aspects trump all the safety aspects.  If the desire is to learn a general science with lab, there are far safer labs in which to bring an animal than microbiology.  Nobody's blocking anyone from attending lecture, but I will indeed be pushy about whether a comfort animal trumps my student's right to attend without the allergen aspect.

If the desire is to be on the career path to using the microbiology lab skills as were the examples in The Scientist article, then now is indeed the time to discuss specifically how that could work as one continues in the major.

And this comment is precisely why the ADA exists, so that university faculty and ex-faculty who have hiring authority aren't allowed to say: "Oh, nobody who needs THAT could ever do THIS job."

I teach lots of students who plan to enter a field that has many specific exemptions for the ADA. I cannot refuse any reasonable accommodation, just because I don't think a student will be able to meet the requirements of the licensure. The exemptions change, in part because some people push past the gatekeepers.

[dr_codex]

To the extent that some of our students will be employed where they will need this specifically, and their employers are counting on a university education in microbiology as being adequate preparation for it, we should avoid compromising the experience for the sake of the interest of the occasional unusual student.

If you said this aloud at my place you'd be disciplined.

If you said it again, you'd probably be fired.

If you acted on this belief, you'd definitely be fired, and the institution would be facing a lawsuit. And rightly so.

[Hibush]

To the extent that some of our students will be employed where they will need this specifically, and their employers are counting on a university education in microbiology as being adequate preparation for it, we should avoid compromising the experience for the sake of the interest of the occasional unusual student.

If you said this aloud at my place you'd be disciplined.

If you said it again, you'd probably be fired.

If you acted on this belief, you'd definitely be fired, and the institution would be facing a lawsuit. And rightly so.

Please elaborate. If Marshwiggle's term "compromise the experience" were rephrased into the regulatory terminology of "making an unreasonable accommodation", what is the problem?

[dr_codex]

To the extent that some of our students will be employed where they will need this specifically, and their employers are counting on a university education in microbiology as being adequate preparation for it, we should avoid compromising the experience for the sake of the interest of the occasional unusual student.

If you said this aloud at my place you'd be disciplined.

If you said it again, you'd probably be fired.

If you acted on this belief, you'd definitely be fired, and the institution would be facing a lawsuit. And rightly so.

Please elaborate. If Marshwiggle's term "compromise the experience" were rephrased into the regulatory terminology of "making an unreasonable accommodation", what is the problem?

The whole sentence is the problem. On the one hand, we have this group of serious students whose employers demand that they master a skill; on the other, we have the hobbyist's enthusiasm of "the occasional unusual student". The bias runs all the way through.

I'm not in a lab field myself, but I can appreciate that animals in lab spaces pose significant challenges, especially when there are risks of biohazard. I can quickly list several courses on my campus in which a service dog, for instance, would be difficult to accommodate. But the accommodations would not be impossible; they would require imagination, ingenuity, and probably some financial cost. They would fail, however, if the default assumption were that it was impossible, impractical, and/or a casual whim.

I was trying to think of a comparable course. My friend teaches SCUBA classes. Some of his students aspire to be Navy SEALS, and some of his graduates have gone on to be rescue divers who jump out of helicopters. I assume that Marshwiggle would concede that the employer of these students demands that they are SCUBA certified. You know what? My friend's classes also include students with developmental disabilities that you might be able to imagine; these students find a world of motion in the water that they only dream of on land, and it's a transformational experience. They might not become SEALS, but many of them might well find a career working in and under the water. So, I got to wondering: what if a SCUBA student turned up with a therapy dog? It turns out that you can certify as a pet diver. (Cats, too, if you're curious, and have a life to spare.) I'd be scared s***less doing this, since I found open-water dive training scary enough, but so what? Somebody who needs a service animal to dive would find a way, and I'd hope that they'd find an instructor open-minded enough to try.

I'm also not naive that the legal obligations for colleges and universities are not the same as the professional requirements for some fields. If my colleague's student happens to have, or develop, certain kinds of color blindness, that student's future as a SEAL would be gone. But that doesn't allow my colleague to bar that student from his courses. Maybe that SCUBA skill will be used for civilian purposes, or to teach the next generation of divers, or to explore the Marianas Trench. Not my friend's call to make, as long as the student is not a danger to him/herself or others. (Back to this last point in a moment.)

My real point is my first one. If you bleat out the assumption that a "special student" is going to get in the way of "the greater good", you're going to find all kinds of reasons to deny accommodations, and pretty soon you're going to get sued. Who else will you keep out of your labs? The deaf student, who needs somebody to sign? The student in a wheelchair? The dyslexic? The student with prosthesis? The student with ADHD? Your student in recovery who has tremors? Your surgeon with Tourette's? Are they all "that occasional unusual student"?

I'm very sympathetic to the OP. This is a tough call, and because it's a new one, you and your institution probably don't have protocols and procedures in place. Some of the other posters have made what sound to me like reasonable ways to proceed. Health and safety of students, staff, and faculty paramount. Integrity of the course, including fair treatment of all students, secondary. Modifications to course delivery, made as needed. Yes, some accommodations are going to be practically impossible for your place, at this time. There has to be a reasonable limit, but you are legally obliged to ensure that you've made a good-faith effort to ensure that that limit was reached. If, at the end of the day, you really feel like you took your best shot for everybody, then rest easy.

Hibush, does that clarify my remarks? I don't think you verbal slight-of-hand does much, because I don't think Marshwiggle's post is in any way improved by it. In fact, it highlights how much initially is for the drug companies, and how little to any campus constituency.

[craftyprof]

Is it wrong that I'm thinking that any lab that is safe for a poorly trained undergraduate is probably safe for a well-trained dog?

Anyway, I agree with dr_codex on this one.  And to the original posted question, the nature of the service provided by the animal is between the student and the disability office.  The only thing we should be concerned with as faculty is whether or not an accommodation is feasible for the subject.  In this case, the feasibility hinges on whether or not the animal will be safe in the lab.  If the class cannot be made safe for the student and their animal, then they'll have to find an alternative.  But I'd approach it as communicating the risks and requirements and letting the student determine whether or not that is possible.

If the issue is wear PPE and don't lick the floor, communicate that to the student. There's guidance in the literature and places that sell PPE specifically made for dogs.

[Hibush]

I use the regulatory term in place of what Marshwiggle may have intended as a paraphrase.

What we are required to do is make reasonable accommodations. We are not required to make unreasonable accommodations. If a student, or the accommodations office, makes a request that the instructor feels is unreasonable, then it should be perfectly acceptable for them to explain that to the accommodations office. Doing so should not get them disciplined.

It's possible Marshwiggle meant that its inappropriate to make any accommodatione, and I misinterpreted that. Even if that was the intent, why would not the procedure for getting the instructor in compliance be the same as for that rule as for any other of the myriad regulations under which we operate?

I agree that the utility of the class seems immaterial to that question.

[marshwiggle]

To the extent that some of our students will be employed where they will need this specifically, and their employers are counting on a university education in microbiology as being adequate preparation for it, we should avoid compromising the experience for the sake of the interest of the occasional unusual student.

If you said this aloud at my place you'd be disciplined.

If you said it again, you'd probably be fired.

If you acted on this belief, you'd definitely be fired, and the institution would be facing a lawsuit. And rightly so.

Please elaborate. If Marshwiggle's term "compromise the experience" were rephrased into the regulatory terminology of "making an unreasonable accommodation", what is the problem?

The whole sentence is the problem. On the one hand, we have this group of serious students whose employers demand that they master a skill; on the other, we have the hobbyist's enthusiasm of "the occasional unusual student". The bias runs all the way through.

The course I teach is an elective for most students who take it. It is required for a small number. If I make changes to suit the people taking it as an elective but which makes it fall short of its goals for those who require it, then that's a problem. I'm glad that there are "enthusiastic hobbyists" and I actively recruit them, but I have a primary responsibility to the students who require it.

I'm not in a lab field myself, but I can appreciate that animals in lab spaces pose significant challenges, especially when there are risks of biohazard. I can quickly list several courses on my campus in which a service dog, for instance, would be difficult to accommodate. But the accommodations would not be impossible; they would require imagination, ingenuity, and probably some financial cost. They would fail, however, if the default assumption were that it was impossible, impractical, and/or a casual whim.

I was trying to think of a comparable course. My friend teaches SCUBA classes. Some of his students aspire to be Navy SEALS, and some of his graduates have gone on to be rescue divers who jump out of helicopters. I assume that Marshwiggle would concede that the employer of these students demands that they are SCUBA certified.

If completing the course is supposed to indicate being SCUBA-certified, then yes, that is what I would expect.

(Incidentally, the fact that some become SEALS is irrelevant; what matters is what the course claims to signify by its completion.)

You know what? My friend's classes also include students with developmental disabilities that you might be able to imagine; these students find a world of motion in the water that they only dream of on land, and it's a transformational experience. They might not become SEALS, but many of them might well find a career working in and under the water. So, I got to wondering: what if a SCUBA student turned up with a therapy dog? It turns out that you can certify as a pet diver.

So if I understand this, the regulations actually address what to do in this case. In that case, there's no problem since it's a recognized option.

My real point is my first one. If you bleat out the assumption that a "special student" is going to get in the way of "the greater good", you're going to find all kinds of reasons to deny accommodations, and pretty soon you're going to get sued.

It's not about "the greater good", whatever that might be; it's about what the course claims students will be capable of when they have completed it.  Any accommodations that don't compromise that are fine.

Who else will you keep out of your labs? The deaf student, who needs somebody to sign?

Possibly, if it's a music appreciation class.

The student in a wheelchair?

Possibly, if it's a track and field class.

The dyslexic? The student with prosthesis? The student with ADHD? Your student in recovery who has tremors? Your surgeon with Tourette's? Are they all "that occasional unusual student"?

Um, I'm guessing a hospital would have issues with their insurance company if they allowed a surgeon with known tremors or physical tics to actually operate on patients, but I'm not a lawyer.

Hibush, does that clarify my remarks? I don't think you verbal slight-of-hand does much, because I don't think Marshwiggle's post is in any way improved by it. In fact, it highlights how much initially is for the drug companies, and how little to any campus constituency.

What do drug companies have to do with it? Lab health and safety protocols, as far as I know, are established by government agencies, not drug companies, and violating them has potential legal consequences, rather than just some sort of financial penalty from a pharmaceutical company.

[namazu]

My real point is my first one. If you bleat out the assumption that a "special student" is going to get in the way of "the greater good", you're going to find all kinds of reasons to deny accommodations, and pretty soon you're going to get sued.

It's not about "the greater good", whatever that might be; it's about what the course claims students will be capable of when they have completed it.  Any accommodations that don't compromise that are fine.

If the purpose of the course is to train students in advanced microbiology techniques, and the student (with the reasonable accommodation of a service animal present) is able to learn those advanced microbiology techniques, then there's no compromise in standards.

Safety/regulatory issues surrounding the presence of a dog in the lab may be valid concerns -- though, as others have pointed out, they may not be insurmountable, either. 

Of course, if you're inclined to write off students with disabilities because you think that accommodating them is too much trouble or that accommodations inherently equal compromised standards, you're unlikely to figure out the workarounds.

The dyslexic? The student with prosthesis? The student with ADHD? Your student in recovery who has tremors? Your surgeon with Tourette's? Are they all "that occasional unusual student"?

Um, I'm guessing a hospital would have issues with their insurance company if they allowed a surgeon with known tremors or physical tics to actually operate on patients, but I'm not a lawyer.

"Dr. Morton Doran, surgeon with Tourette syndrome, appointed to the Order of Canada" (CBC Radio)

[marshwiggle]

The dyslexic? The student with prosthesis? The student with ADHD? Your student in recovery who has tremors? Your surgeon with Tourette's? Are they all "that occasional unusual student"?

Um, I'm guessing a hospital would have issues with their insurance company if they allowed a surgeon with known tremors or physical tics to actually operate on patients, but I'm not a lawyer.

"Dr. Morton Doran, surgeon with Tourette syndrome, appointed to the Order of Canada" (CBC Radio)

From a Los Angeles Times article:

Morton Doran says he didn't discover he had the neurological disorder Tourette's syndrome until he was 37; by then, Doran, a general surgeon practicing in northwest Canada, was living a double life. At home, with his wife and children, he displayed the symptoms of full-blown Tourette's--motor tics, obsessive-compulsive rituals and uncontrolled, expletive-laden outbursts known as coprolalia.

But in the operating room, hovering over a patient, a different person emerged, one with a focused gaze and steady hands.

So, he was a surgeon before he was diagnosed, and in the OR he was basically asymptomatic. This isn't the same as a student with physical tics.

[namazu]

Um, I'm guessing a hospital would have issues with their insurance company if they allowed a surgeon with known tremors or physical tics to actually operate on patients, but I'm not a lawyer.

"Dr. Morton Doran, surgeon with Tourette syndrome, appointed to the Order of Canada" (CBC Radio)

From a Los Angeles Times article:

Morton Doran says he didn't discover he had the neurological disorder Tourette's syndrome until he was 37; by then, Doran, a general surgeon practicing in northwest Canada, was living a double life. At home, with his wife and children, he displayed the symptoms of full-blown Tourette's--motor tics, obsessive-compulsive rituals and uncontrolled, expletive-laden outbursts known as coprolalia.

But in the operating room, hovering over a patient, a different person emerged, one with a focused gaze and steady hands.

So, he was a surgeon before he was diagnosed, and in the OR he was basically asymptomatic. This isn't the same as a student with physical tics.

Dr. Doran was a student with physical tics earlier in his life.  Undiagnosed doesn't mean asymptomatic. 

From a different LA Times article:

Growing up, Mort Doran knew he wasn't like other kids.

The Canadian native had trouble concentrating, so he had to work harder than his classmates. And he had uncontrollable spasms of what most people would consider bizarre behavior: jerking his body, repeatedly counting things, twirling or prancing around, reading books by holding them with the spine precisely centered before his nose, making sure that if he touched something on its right side, he also touched the left side.

When his father suggested that Doran go to medical school, he obliged. After all, no one told him he couldn't, despite his quirks, which had never been medically diagnosed.

Had you observed his tics, or known that he had Tourette's, you presumably would have tried to dissuade him from becoming a doctor (or from taking your lab course, which might have prevented him from becoming a doctor) based on your (unwarranted) fears about how his tics might affect him. 

Of course, if he could not function safely in a lab or medical setting with or without reasonable accommodations, it would be justifiable to exclude him.  But antidiscrimination laws exist, in part, to ensure that people who hold unjustified prejudices about the capabilities of individuals with disabilities don't have carte blanche to deny them opportunities for spurious reasons.

[dr_codex]

As Namuzu sussed out, I wasn't just picking hypotheticals out of the air.

It's amazing what people can do when they aren't blocked. "I'm sorry, Ludwig, but you'll never make it in this business. Maybe you should consider a trade." (Anticipating the rejoinder that Beethoven wasn't deaf when he broke into the business, there are lots of professional musicians who were. I'm sure your lawyer can look them up.)

I repeat: "guesses" about the law are going to get you sued.

[Aster]

What we are required to do is make reasonable accommodations. We are not required to make unreasonable accommodations. If a student, or the accommodations office, makes a request that the instructor feels is unreasonable, then it should be perfectly acceptable for them to explain that to the accommodations office. Doing so should not get them disciplined.

+1. This is the heart of the issue. What is defined as "reasonable accommodation" has been steadily shifting over the years to encompass more and more situations that previously would have been viewed as "unreasonable". Much of this shift has do with the increasing numbers and types of students being documented as wanting or needing special accomodations. Much of this shift is also connected to the increasing adjunctification of the Higher Education workforce. Fewer and fewer professors either don't have the academic freedom (or the perception of academic freedom) to decline an "unreasonable" accommodation request.

A perfect example (that I witness every single semester) is laboratory practicums. Big Urban College's laboratory courses are >80% taught by adjuncts.

Most all of the tenure track professors don't allow students (regardless of accommodation request) to opt out of laboratory practicums or have their practicums converted into non-practicum design. In the latter case, that would compromise the entire point of the laboratory-based course experience. So we don't let that happen. If a student needs accommodation on a scale that fundamentally restricts core assessment, that student is not qualified to be in the course. If they somehow get in the course anyway, they receive advising on withdrawing, and/or their accommodations are made to fit with existing assessment practices. Extended laboratory time, for one example. Or a special laboratory session just for those students, as another example.

But most of the adjunct faculty at Big Urban College will allow students with accommodation requests to opt out of laboratory practicums, or have their practicums converted into non-practicum formats. Why do so many adjunct faculty drop core standards this way? Because they are afraid of student complaints, afraid of negative reviews, afraid of not being rehired. Our adjuncts also do not have offices or have office hours. They rarely advise students and don't have good mechanisms to meet with students. And finally, our adjuncts just don't have the respect or self-confidence to assert themselves as professors. What this means is that "inquiries" or "requests" coming out of ancillary administrative arms (e.g. student services, registrar) are interpreted more as demands. The adjunct faculty are far less likely to engage in dialogue, compromise on requests, and especially refuse requests.

As professional educators, it is up to us to define "reasonable" vs. "unreasonable" regarding course curriculum practices.  But whether or not we choose to exercise that duty can be more difficult for some than others.