MC1: Neurodiversity Coaching: Coaching Skills and Strategies to Building Student Self-Determination
Christina Fabrey, Virginia Tech
Marianna Henry, JST Coaching and Training
With an increasing focus on student success in addition to access, disability resource professionals are embracing student success coaching as a technique useful to improve students’ academic success, personal health and wellbeing, and a sense of belonging. Professionals can integrate coaching skills to build a deeper connection to students while also integrating knowledge of neurodiversity, exploring how the disabilities affect individuals, and delving into how the barriers in higher education can be mitigated through systems, structures, and support. As a holistic intervention, neurodiversity coaching skills allow professionals to create an atmosphere of trust and safety for students to share their concerns, identify roadblocks to change, and brainstorm ideas that are both comfortable and attainable. Participants will explore how the traditional services model can be enhanced by using an innovative and inclusive coaching approach.
This class will provide new and seasoned disability resource professionals with practical strategies, tools, and resources to apply coaching in their everyday interactions with students. Participants will learn core coaching skills and then how to adjust the coaching process to support neurodivergent individuals, including those with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, and other disabilities. The session will provide techniques to use in the initial student meeting as well as in on-going meetings with students or within brief interactions. The workshop will include information, best practices, and resources, and interactive engagement through small group discussion and practice.
This session will include:
- The foundations of student success coaching
- How student success coaching intersects with neurodiversity coaching
- The integration of coaching into the accommodations process
- Coaching strategies for neurodivergent learners
- Application of coaching through practice
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MC2: Strategies and Tools to Elevate Disability and Create Campuswide Change
Bea Awoniyi, Santa Fe College
Craig Levins, Broward College
Many disability professionals, whether you work in the campus office working to enact student accommodations or in the ADA coordinator/compliance office, wish that others on campus had a better understanding of the barriers that exist for students with disabilities throughout their educational experiences. Some of the largest impediments to disabled student success are existing policies that are applied to all members of the institution, but which often unintentionally negatively affect disabled students. So how can those in the disability office elevate the conversation about disability to the upper level administrators and create meaningful change across the entire campus?
This session will provide specific strategies and tools to enable disability professionals to:
- Gather and leverage the most relevant data from the disability office to make a case with the administration and equip administrators to support the need for change
- Identify and nurture allies throughout the institution, who can help champion the need for reforms of schoolwide policies that negatively impact students with disabilities
- Understand the importance of disability service professionals sitting on college-wide committees and participating in academic forums, to ensure accessibility is considered in institution-wide decision making.
- Successfully engage with faculty, instructional designers, and administrators to get greater campus-wide buy-in about creating and maintaining accessible courses and materials
- Connect with student advocates to solicit their input and support them to advocate for a more equitable campus
- Educate the campus community about the importance of including disability into the institution’s Strategic Plan, Diversity Statements, Mission, Vision, and Values
The instructors, who come from both two-year and four-year institutional backgrounds, will incorporate plenty of non-lecture style instruction, such as group discussion, scenario-based learning, and personal reflection. At the end of the workshop, participants will have created a series of steps in a personal plan to take home to implement in their own institution to make thoughtful, well-planned change.
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MC3: Navigating an Intricate Maze: Evaluating Complex Accommodation Requests
RJ Kilgore, Johnson and Wales University
Chris Stone, Washington University at St. Louis
Experienced Disability Resource Professionals (DRPs) acknowledge a fair degree of confidence addressing the majority of student requests that have come to be viewed as commonplace or relatively straightforward. This is a testament to the preparation DRPs and their departments have undertaken to stay abreast of emerging best practices based upon guidance from peers as well as scholars and legal findings. At the same time, now more than ever, DRPs—even the most experienced and knowledgeable—recognize the challenges confronting our institutions as they navigate increasingly nuanced and complicated accommodation requests and situations while remaining focused on supporting students’ learning, development, and most importantly, accessible opportunity. Questions persist as to how to effectively, equitably, and empathetically engage in this critical work with consistency, despite the subtly of each student’s needs. Through this Master Class, course facilitators will provide frameworks as attendees navigate:
- Defining Reasonable and Appropriate Accommodations.
- Assessing Fundamental Alteration.
- Engaging in individual assessment of disability-related barriers and evaluating avenues to address identified needs.
- Distinguishing disability-related barriers from other potential concerns (e.g., religious, Title IX, financial, English language learners).
- Collaborating with campus and external partners (e.g., faculty, placement sites, Dining Services, Residence Life, academic supports).
Presenters will address approaches in evaluating a variety of challenging situations, including:
- Students presenting with multiple or complex disabilities.
- Appropriate and reasonable accommodations necessary across various academic and learning, social, and housing environments.
- Accommodations within performance-based programs which include hands-on practical learning components and technical standards (e.g. studio and culinary arts, health care, laboratory work).
- Requests for course substitutions or exemptions.
- Modifications to attendance and deadline policies, including within performance-based or participatory learning objectives.
- Offsite accommodations, (e.g., student teaching, clinicals, practicums, internships).
- Graduate program accommodations, including professional programs.
- Remote attendance requests.
Course facilitators will bring their experience in 2- and 4-year undergraduate and graduate programs, including non-degree curriculums, at both public and private institutions. Attendees are encouraged to come prepared to engage in an immersive and collaborative learning experience designed to include individual and group activities that will explore various situations and case studies involving complex issues. Gather your questions, and join us as we navigate the intricate maze of complex determinations, modeling approaches to help you tackle the thorniest situations with confidence.
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MC4: Embracing Intersectionality: Supporting and Welcoming Multiply Marginalized Students
Vivian Hardison, University of California, Santa Barbara
Maria Schiano, County College of Morris
Every student comes to college with a variety of identities, including race, gender identity, national origin, immigration status, income level, and disability, among others. As disability professionals, we want all students to feel welcome in our offices and receive culturally appropriate services, even if we as practitioners don't share all of their identities. How can we work to ensure that our office--and the campus as a whole--provide an environment where all students feel comfortable and included? This session will discuss some of the theoretical frameworks of higher education regarding approaches to marginalized groups and explore how we can use those frameworks to create a more open and accessible space for students, faculty, staff, and the community.
Over the three days, we will reflect on the various identities we hold, and how the various privileges we hold show up in the work we do. We will cover topics including:
- How we as individuals can improve our interpersonal communication with students with intersecting identities.
- Ways the disability office can make sure historically marginalized students are aware of its services and be clear that all students are welcome there.
- How the disability office can partner with other campus entities, such as academic support, residence life, and diversity and Title IX staff, to provide broader institutional support for students with intersecting identities.
- Planning campus outreach and events that are inclusive of all student identities.
Though some of the work we do throughout the three-day workshop may at times feel uncomfortable as we confront how higher education institutions have largely been framed to serve the "haves" and create barriers for the "have-nots," attendees will leave this workshop with concrete steps they can take to fundamentally change the systems and lead their institutions to own up to their history and commit to systematic change.
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MC5: Disability Law: Lessons in Application for the Advanced Disability Professional
Paul Grossman, J.D., Executive Counsel of AHEAD, and OCR and Hastings College of Law, retired
Jamie Axelrod, M.S., Northern Arizona University
Mary Lee Vance, Ph.D., California State University Sacramento
This advanced training will highlight the application of long-standing and widely-accepted judicial precedents and principles, as well as recent court decisions, to the analysis and resolution of the latest and most challenging issues in postsecondary student disability law. At the outset, we will succinctly review the analytical tools and processes provided in our introductory course. The bulk of the course will consist of modules covering critical topic areas, facilitating best practice discussions through multiple case scenarios. Together with your colleagues and the presenters, you will explore these difficult issues and assess practical policies, processes, and procedures that provide effective access in accordance with legal obligations. Many of our hypotheticals will be based on findings, letters, and court decisions from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) or the U.S. Department of Justice that reflect common and recurring situations; participant scenarios are also welcome.
This master class will include 12.5 hours of face-to-face discussion and instruction. The training is fast-paced and assumes competence in the basics of the ADA and disability resources. Therefore, participants will be better prepared to participate in this course if they have previously taken the 2-day AHEAD introductory course in postsecondary disability law offered at the AHEAD Management Institute or as a summer pre-conference.
The topical modules will focus on the following areas:
- A refresher: an overview of postsecondary student disability law including analytical paradigms, processes, and defenses such as fundamental alteration and undue burden.
- Accommodations that are complex to administer, including flexibility with attendance and extensions of time to complete assignments.
- Responding to accommodation requests for some form of remote/on-line learning.
- Housing accommodations, such as a single room.
- Service animals and ESAs.
- Nondiscrimination and accommodation within the setting of internships and field work.
- Students with mental health-related disabilities: accommodation, conduct/misconduct including “direct threat analyses,” and how to lawfully respond to self-injurious behavior.
- Accommodations that pertain to the intersection of Title IX and Section 504, such as addressing pregnancy and allegations of sexual harassment and violence.
- Digital equality, including website access and AI.
Come join the conversation, where we’ll discuss the most recent legal guidance and then apply what we learn to real world examples, so that you leave prepared to address even the most complex accommodation requests.
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