UMass ADVANCE is pleased to announce the selection of four new teams for mutual mentoring grants that support UMass faculty who will come together to build inclusive communities over the 2022-23 academic year. UMass ADVANCE mutual mentoring groups are funded up to $6,000 a year.
Meredith Aleigha Wells ’17, has discovered that limitation breeds creativity. Since graduating from UMass Amherst with a BDIC (Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration) in musical theater, Wells has found many ways to work in the field, despite a scarcity of roles for performers with disabilities and the constraints of COVID-19.
Wells identifies as a queer disabled musical theatre artist and writer. As a UMass sophomore, after about a year of unexplained symptoms, they were diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a form of autonomic dysfunction (dysautonomia). Wells’s symptoms including fatigue and dizziness vary day to day and they use a wheelchair most of the time.