“I have always been drawn to creative problems, yet I have always solved those problems in technical ways. I am very left-brained. But people need to know being left-brained can be just as creative as being right-brained. In fact, if you are forced to pick the perspective of just one side, you lose the overlap between them. That is where all the good things happen.”
This is the personal philosophy of Domenic Gallo ’24, a sophomore in the industrial design program at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA). This semester, Gallo has enjoyed putting his creative problem-solving skills to the test in an inclusive design class offered through Intelligence++, a collaboration among VPA, Blackstone LaunchPad at SU Libraries, and InclusiveU, a program of the School of Education’s Lawrence B. Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education.
The elective—available to both undergraduates and graduates—challenges students to ideate and build solutions for challenges unique to individuals with intellectual disabilities.