According to a 2014 survey of more than 150,000 people conducted by the University of Cambridge, engineers are more likely to exhibit autistic traits than any other profession. Now, 12 years later, the need for career support among neurodivergent engineers in higher education is higher than ever. With an aging workforce and a shortage thereof, the engineering sector needs new minds with innovative ways of thinking.
Enter A-SCENE. The Autism Self-Advocacy Center for Equity and Neurodiversity in Engineering is an NSF-funded initiative led by the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation dedicated to creating a supportive path for neurodivergent students entering the engineering field. I sat down with Dave Thompson, the Program Manager of A-SCENE at the Frist Center. “As our understanding of neurodivergence increases along with a greater enthusiasm about the topic, it becomes an elephant in the room about the engineering world,” Dave mentioned. “There happens to be a lot of people who are interested in engineering and other potential contributors who haven’t felt confident to invite themselves in.”
The A-SCENE project is built on three major pillars: targeting workforce shortages and neurodivergent strengths while removing barriers to access.
Workforce Shortages
Engineering is short on people, not potential. In 2022, about 184,000 engineers retired or left the field, with only 166,000 new graduates entering the workforce. This estimated gap of 18,000 engineers a year is only getting worse. The foundations of A-SCENE surround the premise that neurodivergent students are a largely untapped part of this solution. If a ramp towards these engineering programs and careers is clearer, the talent pipeline becomes wider.
Neurodivergent Strengths
A-SCENE operates on the strength-based model for neurodiversity in employment, which replaces traditional deficit-based views with a perspective that identifies the unique cognitive talents of neurodivergent workers. Though the attention for neurodiversity among employment recruiting has grown, neurodivergent individuals still face higher than normal unemployment rates or a lack of confidence in pursuing the career in the first place. The strength-based approach to neurodiversity argues that higher education and companies should embrace individual strengths as an opportunity for organizational growth and productivity. As Thompson puts it, “Neurodiversity is the solution, not the problem.”
Barriers to Access
A-SCENE is designed to remove the persistent barriers to access in academic and workplace systems. Autistic individuals face incredibly low rates of engagement in the workforce, partially due to significant barriers that prevent individuals from entering the workforce. Discrimination is an issue in itself, but unemployment is also associated with a higher frequency of anxiety and a worse quality of life. Even when employed, individuals with autism experience underemployment and lower earnings.
With a strong foundation and understanding of these three pillars, A-SCENE’s goal is to give engineering schools a comprehensive, connected system of support from higher education to the STEM workforce so neurodivergent students can access and succeed in engineering.
Meet the Core Partners
A-SCENE isn’t just one program; it’s four campuses each building a different piece of the same system. The core members of A-SCENE include the engineering departments at Vanderbilt University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Missouri, and Northeastern University. As Thompson put it, “Each partner institution contributes to a different area of expertise. A-SCENE brings together complementary strengths to create a national model that other colleges of engineering can realistically adopt.”
A-SCENE isn’t about building one program for every engineering school to copy. Instead, each partner institution serves as a lighthouse, developing and refining approaches that fit its own campus while sharing what works with the rest of the consortium. Every university has different students, cultures, and resources, but by learning from one another, each institution can adapt proven ideas rather than starting from scratch. Thompson explained, “We want to spread the good word and create social impact in this space as widely as we can. We’re learning along the way, but it’s a matter of putting our minds together.”
Vanderbilt University: Graduate Training & Leadership Development
Vanderbilt University has been especially focused on graduate engineering education and leadership development even prior to the A-SCENE grant. NISE (Neurodiversity Inspired Science and Engineering) is an interdisciplinary graduate program that engages STEM students in developing technologies that support neurodivergent people and build on their strengths. WRaP (Workforce Readiness and Preparation) is a three-week summer program for teens ages 15 to 20 on the autism spectrum, designed to teach job skills before they even reach college. These initiatives, among others, provide opportunities to engineering students and serve as working models that inform the broader community about future dissemination efforts.
Thompson’s research argues that lasting change in this space comes from moving beyond isolated programs toward participant-driven systems where neurodivergent individuals shape the culture, communities, and pathways themselves. A major piece of the puzzle, for Thompson, is the employer pipeline. “I’ve spent my career building bridges,” he said. “We want to be a source of talent for organizations.” He is trying to bring the same perspective into A-SCENE.
The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, housed within Vanderbilt’s College of Engineering, was formed in 2017 to serve as the academic research partner in a larger, community-based effort to build an employment pipeline for neurodivergent individuals. It brings together engineers, business scholars, researchers, and clinical experts, working alongside self-advocates, with a focus on employment outcomes and creating initiatives within higher education. One major initiative of the Frist Center is the College Autism Network, led by Executive Director Dr. Lee Burdette Wiliams, which is at the forefront of improving access and experiences for autistic college students.
University of Missouri: Navigating Academic Systems & Transitions
The University of Missouri is already hard at work with cultivating neuroinclusive academic systems. Dr. Marisa Chrysochoou, the Dean of the College of Engineering at Mizzou, leads a 5-year partnership with the University of Connecticut through a NSF RED (Revolutionizing Engineering Departments) project. The $2.5 million grant from the NSF titled, “Cultivating Neuroadaptive Learning Ecosystems through AI-Powered Personalized Learning,” is working to transform learning experiences for students and faculty.
Dr. Shannon Locke is the Project Manager for the A-SCENE grant as well as the NSF-funded RED grant to support neurodiversity initiatives at the University of Missouri. Her position is at the forefront of helping support neurodivergent learners through more inclusive practices and the lens of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). One initiative in the works, specifically designing an AI Tutor will support all learners by incorporating principles of UDL and self-regulated learning in the model so students – neurodivergent or not – can access real-time AI support for their learning. A related project is an AI learning lab, which will recruit student researchers and intentionally invite neurodivergent students to join the research community. Their work will explore the bias within AI, including how AI systems respond differently depending on whether a user identifies as neurodivergent. “Disclosure is very personal, and everybody comes to the table with different backgrounds,” Dr. Locke explained. “We are making everything accessible regardless.” Recruiting neurodivergent students alongside neurotypical peers for the lab, she said, will be a key piece of the work going forward.
University of Missouri is the state’s flagship university. Columbia, Missouri is a fairly rural area yet has a huge alumni network with immense loyalty. “We have a lot of potential in terms of collaborating partners,” Dr. Locke mentioned. “Right now, industries are reaching out to us to partner on conscientiously advancing AI in Missouri and explore ways to make work settings more neuroadaptive and inclusive as well.”
University of Connecticut: Neuroinclusive Teaching & Strengths-Based Education
The inclusion programming at the University of Connecticut has its roots in previous work done by Dr. Chryschoou, who started the NSF-funded work while serving as the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Head at UConn. A previous literature review done by Chryschoou and her team revealed that only 3% of college students with ADHD, and just 5% of students on the autism spectrum, were enrolled in engineering programs. The five-year project that followed, Include, set out to shift the department’s culture toward genuine neuroinclusion, a model that A-SCENE would later draw on.
The more revealing part of UConn’s story isn’t the list of programs, but how the team’s strategy changed over time. Include started, like most efforts in the space, as student-facing, including workshops, mentoring, and direct support for neurodivergent students trying to navigate an engineering curriculum that wasn’t built with them in mind. “The best use of our effort wasn’t supporting students after the fact, in an environment that wasn’t built to support them anyway – it was working with faculty to change the environment itself,” says Dr. Connie Syharat, who served as Program Manager of Include from 2020 to 2025 and conducts qualitative research on the experiences of neurodivergent students in STEM programs. At the peak of its student-facing strategy, the program was only reaching 8-15 students a year.
The team pivoted and began pouring resources into the faculty. Courses were redesigned with a focus on universal design, building courses for every kind of learner from the start, rather than fitting in accommodations after the fact. Rather than focusing on their learning community, which enrolled 8 to 15 students per semester, the focus on redesigned engineering classes allowed for a broader impact, reaching thousands of students and drawing on neurodiverse voices to fuel the transition. UConn is also in an early, exploratory phase of using AI to personalize learning experiences. Their recently launched Neuroinclusive Teaching Mini-Course, is comprised of 6 virtual, self-paced modules centered around a strengths-based model for neuroinclusive teaching. The mini-course is aimed at university faculty, staff, and other educational professionals who want to implement neuroinclusive teaching practices in their own courses and educational contexts. Custom GPTs embedded within the course allow faculty the option to explore the potential for integration of AI-powered tools in their courses to enhance personalization of learning experiences.
Now, being a core partner of A-SCENE, UConn can scale their support even further. Faculty can apply for a stipend to support implementation and dissemination of neuroinclusive practices that work for them. This marks a small piece of what A-SCENE hopes to eventually turn into a national playbook for other engineering schools.
Northeastern University: Co-op & Employer Pathways
Northeastern is at the forefront of experiential learning programs. The Northeastern co-op program has been around for over a century, aiming to provide students with hands-on professional career experience. Erik Brenner is the Director of Belonging Initiatives at Northeastern University. “Co-op is a 6-month job placement. The majority of students complete 2 co-ops prior to graduation,” Erik shared. The co-op program has proven it has significant benefits. 97% of Northeastern students get a job or are in graduate school within 9 months of graduating, and 58% of students end up getting an offer from a previous co-op employer. The College of Engineering alone has over 3,800 employer partners, including Amazon, Google, SpaceX, and Pfizer.
Rather than standing up new infrastructure, A-SCENE’s role at Northeastern was to translate an already-massive employer network into a neuroinclusive one. “A-SCENE has allowed us to work with our pre-existing coalition of employers who are already engaged in neurodiversity hiring or would like to develop this capacity,” Erik added. “We provide professional development to our employer partners on what neuroinclusive workplace practices include and how they can be achieved through universal design.”
This work happens on two sides. On the student side, staff meet with neurodivergent students before a co-op begins. “We meet 1:1 with students to identify workplace strengths and preferences to help determine how they translate into applying, interviewing, and performing in a co-op,” Erik explains. On the employer side, that same universal-design thinking gets built into how partner companies’ interview, onboard, and manage co-op students.
Underlying their initiatives is a principle that Northeastern treats as non-negotiable: “nothing about us without us,” with the majority of the university’s belonging staff identifying as neurodivergent. “Additionally, we have active student membership on our Steering Committee, where the feedback is used to help inform the decisions we make,” Erik mentioned. This governance model is intended to help inform the national playbook A-SCENE is developing.
Beyond These Four Campuses
At the end of the day, the goal of A-SCENE isn’t for future partners to copy and paste the systems working at other schools. It is to help engineering programs everywhere build their own neuroinclusive systems. Success at one campus may not be defined as success at another campus.
That philosophy extends beyond individual campuses too. One of A-SCENE’s key deliverables is a new professional organization: the Society for Neurodivergent Engineering. Modeled after long-running groups like the Society of Women Engineers, in existence since the 40s, it would give students a professional community while at college and a way to stay connected for life.
A major goal of A-SCENE is to develop and expand a national playbook for neuroinclusive engineering. Arizona State University and University of Illinois Champaign have already committed to being the next partnering institutions with A-SCENE to learn from the collective ‘playbook’. Within the next couple of years, this network will expand to departments all over the country.
To learn more and get involved with the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, you can check out our “Get Involved” page. We hope to publish more updates on the progress of A-SCENE as we expand across different engineering programs and develop more neuroinclusive initiatives in this space.