In this, our first crossover episode, we joined with Elizabeth Hamblet (one of our new cohosts) as she hosted a Facebook Live discussion with four guests who work in programs for students with disabilities – Brittany Cortinas of the University of Arizona’s SALT Center, Ann-Marie Stripling of Focus Collegiate, Mary Sokolowski of College Internship Program, and Adam Lalor of Landmark College. Our panel shared information about how to evaluate what’s right for your student and how different programs support students in various ways. Don’t skip over this episode if your student does not have a disability or ADHD because there’s lots of information about how to support your neuro-typical student as well.
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We’re excited to present this episode as a crossover between the College Parent Central and Elizabeth Hamblet’s LDAdvisory Facebook Live event. Elizabeth organized a wonderful panel of professionals who work in differing programs supporting students with disabilities. This was an excellent opportunity for parents to understand the options they may have for supporting their students.
We were joined in this episode by Brittany Cortinas of the University of Arizona’s SALT Center, Ann-Marie Stripling of Focus Collegiate, Mary Sokolowski of College Internship Program, and Adam Lalor of Landmark College and Elizabeth also talked about the work that she does supporting students in a college Disabilities Office. The panelists represent a wide variety of support types and it is important that parents understand what each type of support can or cannot do for your student.
If you’d like to follow up with any of the panelists, they gave the following contact information:
Adam Lalor – adamlalor@landmark.edu or admissions@landmark.edu
Ann-Marie Stipling -annmarie@focuscollegiate.com or 617-807-0055.
Brittany Cortinas – bmcortin@arizona.edu or salt.arizona.edu
Mary Sokolowski – msokolowski@cipworldwide.org or 413-344-4109, extension 21
And be sure to check out Elizabeth Hamblet’s new book – Seven Steps to College Success: A Pathway to Success for Students with Disabilities.
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In addition to listening to the podcast, if you prefer video, this episode is also available on Elizabeth’s Youtube channel – LD Advisory – and you can watch it there.
Transcript of this episode
Vicki Nelson:
Welcome to the College Parent Central Podcast. My name is Vicki Nelson and I’m one of your co-hosts. This is a special episode because it is our first ever crossover episode and it features an exceptional panel discussion about supports for students with learning disabilities at ADHD. Elizabeth Hamlet joined our podcast team this year and originally hosted this panel as a Facebook Live event, and we are now pleased to release it as a podcast episode. So if you didn’t know about or weren’t able to catch it live on Facebook, here it is for you now. Episode 105, Q&A on College Supports for Students with Learning Disabilities and ADHD.
Announcer:
Welcome to the College Parent Central Podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You’ll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and learning. And if you’re interested in learning about or learning about the future, then you’ll find a way to help you navigate that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Welcome everybody. My name is Elizabeth Hamblet and we are doing a special event today, so, okay, we’re gonna see how good my working memory is. I often do these Facebook events online, but I have had the honor of being invited to join the College Parent Central podcast, of which I am a subscriber and great fan Also not just the podcast, but the blog. So joining me today is Vicki Nelson, who is the founder of College Parent Central, and I am a great admirer of hers, and we thought we would try to record the podcast and do one of my usual Facebook Lives streaming. So, for those of you who are listening to this, on the podcast you don’t get to see these wonderful people, but you can go to the YouTube channel also if you just wanna watch this video as well as listen to the audio. So we are going to get started. I am a college transition resource, I guess for people. For those who are not familiar with me, I work part-time in a college disability services office as a learning specialist and I help students with time management and organization and reading strategies and things that are challenging for everybody at college but that my university offers, especially to my students. Mine is an unusual position for a college disability services office to have, because my services are offered to my students for free, and so, for those who are new to this whole world, it is a very different environment between K through 12, special ed or if your student has a 504 plan, the kinds of supports that colleges have to provide under, pardon me, high schools have to provide under either IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or section 504, subpart D, which is the part that applies to K through 12 schools, and subpart E, which applies to colleges. So when I am not working at my college job that I love so much, I am out here trying to help professionals and family members learn about these differences, and one place that’s really a stark distinction is between the kinds of supports and accommodations that are often available, and so there are lots of different ways to get certain kinds of supports for students, and that’s what we are here to talk about today. So all of these wonderful people have joined me and I have selected some wonderful representatives from these different categories of support types. So with that and just sort of going clockwise on my screen, I’m going to ask each of you to introduce yourself. So, Adam, you appear first. Go for it.
Adam Lalor:
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for having me here today, Elizabeth, Incredibly prestigious panel. So thanks to all the fellow panelists. My name is Adam Lalor. I’m the Vice President for Neurodiversity Research and Innovation at Landmark College. For folks unfamiliar with Landmark College, Landmark is the first and one of two colleges in the entire world that serves solely students with learning disabilities, ADHD and autism. I like to describe it as we are to neurodivergent students, what an HBCU might be for black students, or women’s colleges might be. It’s a great community. I am an educational psychologist. I do my research and writing on how do you support students transitioning to college, how to support their success and their ultimate transition on to whatever they choose to do next in life. I also oversee our research and training division at the college, where we’re doing grant-based research as well as training at colleges and universities. Secondary schools. Just did something with the CIA. I mean really around the world. I am the parent of a neurodivergent, two neurodivergent boys. I also identify as neurodivergent disabled. Pleasure to be here.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And I’m fangirling a little because I read Adam’s research, so I’m very excited to have him here. All right, Anne Marie.
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Hello, thank you for inviting me. I’m Ann- Marie Stripling. I’m the enrollment and outreach director for a program called Focus Collegiate. We work with college-age students really across the nation. They can go to any school they get into and want to go to. But what we do is we provide holistic support to them while they’re going to school. So things like helping with academic independence and oversight, helping with social integration. How do they get connected on their new campuses and their new environments? How do they balance all the stuff that they need to balance? Because we all know that college can be a whirlwind a little bit. So how do they balance all those pieces and how can we help them become young adults making independent decisions in a very thoughtful and mindful way? So my background is in special ed and counseling, so I’ve been in the field for a long time. I love working with young adults and have been doing that working with young adults and working with their parents during this transition time. Focus Collegiate is a new program in the scheme of programs and so some of these places. We’re in our fifth year. We’re small but mighty and we love helping students through that process, not only before college, but on the road to success once they’re in college.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Small but mighty. I like to describe myself that way. Yes, Mary.
Mary Sokolowski:
Hey, hi everybody, and thank you for having me on this. It’s going to be great learning experience for me as well, and so I work as a national enrollment specialist for the college internship program, or CIP, which is a transition program for 18 to 26 year olds with learning disabilities and autism. Primarily, about 80% of our students have an autism spectrum diagnosis. So we’re not a school, but we provide support services for students who are in our program and who are attending school. So we’re a little different than Focus, because our students are in our program and then go to the colleges that are typically nearby our five centers. We have five centers across the country, and I’m based in Western Massachusetts at our original center, which is going on 40 years old at this point our program, and I’m based in Lee, Massachusetts. My passion for this, however, comes probably from being having been an academic for many years. I taught I’ve taught for over 20 years in two different stints in higher education, as an adjunct professor and as an instructor of record, and I taught mostly freshman English.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Oh, there’s a transition opportunity right there.
Mary Sokolowski:
So I saw a lot of the needs like firsthand in that respect. So that’s one of the reasons why I bring a particular to the transition part of the CIP transition. I feel like I have a passion for the academic piece and our students can track into either academics or career. But most of our students at Berkshire right now are opting for like a hybrid track where they’re testing out careers while they’re also taking one or two college classes. So it’s kind of an interesting model and I’m happy to answer any questions about any of all, any and all of that.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Okay, and for those of you who are watching us live on Facebook, I am attempting to monitor the comments, so if you have questions for these, any of these folks, please put them in there. But now we get to Brittany.
Brittany Cortinas:
Hello and thank you so much for inviting me. This is really exciting. My name is Brittany Cortinas. I am the recruitment coordinator for the SALT Center at the University of Arizona. I have we focus on providing academic assistance to students with mild to moderate learning differences. We have students who are ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, autism, Aspergers, literally anything on the spectrum and we do also take students who don’t have a diagnosis but are fairly certain they do have a learning difference. Our goal is to provide students who are brilliant students who just need a little bit of academic assistance, a place on a large, major campus like the University of Arizona. So that is our focus on making them successful here while still getting all of the advantages of a PAC-12 school, Research One University.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So thanks everybody. One of the things that I really like about the panel is that we sort of have a range of experiences, and I want to start a little bit with focusing on on, like, the extent of supports across environments. So what I mean is Anne Marie’s program – students can be anywhere and get support because they do everything remotely. If you want to go to andmark, you got to go to Landmark, right, or is there? Oh, I’m sorry I forgot. I’m so old. I remember before there was an online option. Okay, so is it a? Is it a full degree program online? Adam?
Adam Lalor:
Yep, we actually have a variety of programs, probably in that fast growing part of the college. We have an associates online. We also have our College Start, which is sort of a one year. Folks who need transition need to get into starting their college degree but need some additional support. We also have dual enrollment, which is not a degree program but it’s individual courses that students can take while in high school. They have to really sort of help with that bridge, that transition.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
For folks who have never heard the term dual enrollment, which is becoming very popular. Could you explain that?
Adam Lalor:
Yeah, certainly. Dual enrollment I mean for us is online but there are in person Dual enrollment programs for students who are currently in secondary education. They are in a high school but they are looking to take college courses for one reason or another. Generally I mean they’re for credit hours or for credit options, and students get the support from their home institution while also getting to work with college faculty. So it really helps bridge that transition of moving from high school to college with one additional staff. Ours is a bit different in that we also offer a support from our institution that sort of serves in a pseudo advising role students. So they have that additional support behind them and they’re really great options. Typically, honestly, for students who are oftentimes associated with something like AP or a student that are considered advanced or gifted. There typically aren’t that many options for neurodivergent folks who who are not in those categories. We’re one of the few that really focuses on being all neurodivergent students.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And that college start program that you mentioned is this one, where students actually earn credits that they can, you know, transfer someplace.
Adam Lalor:
Yep, it’s the first year of college, so it’s an online. I mean, we have folks from all over the country and they have the opportunity to get that first year done in a way that’s really supportive of their needs.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So thinking about the on campus part of Landmark’s program, because and I’m going to toggle between you and Mary. One of the things like students have all different ranges of needs, and so let’s you know, first, starting with the academics, right, everybody here is helping students with academics, but for some the transition to college is not just about that piece but about the self management piece, the social, the social adjustment piece. And so for those who are new to all of this world, we’re not at the college level there are what are called Resident Assistants, usually at least the way I might. My students experienced it who are other undergrads living in the dorms, that kind of help with roommate disputes and things like that. And then sometimes there’s a full on adult who also is sort of in charge of the whole dorm for bigger issues, but they don’t always provide the kinds of supports that families are looking for. So, Adam, at Landmark, I mean, certainly you have this community of students, just like you. But what is, what is the residential piece offer, and are there supports within the residential piece that that people should know about?
Adam Lalor:
Oh, absolutely. I mean so. I should say I started my career at Landmark at in the residential program, so I was a resident dean. Every residence hall on campus has a resident dean who oversees a team of RAs or resident assistant, and at Landmark we certainly do things like programming for students and educational events in the residence halls. But our residential staff has additional training in our particular population of students and what their needs might be. In particular, in the residential environment we see we need to provide supports related to executive function. It provides supports related to social engagement. So when I talk about executive function, really what I’m talking about are things like activation, inhibiting, which is sort of trying to avoid some of those distracting behaviors in your environment. The gratification things you might want to go play video games but really you should be homework or doing homework those types of thing, organization. Students who are neurodivergent, especially in secondary education, often get a lot of skills related to organizing their binder and academics, but who really teaches them how to organize their living environment? So, what we do is, as residential folks is we help them with all of that. Help them develop strategies to get up and out of your room on time and get the class.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Are there wake up calls at Landmark? Do you guys go through banging a pot with a spoon?
Adam Lalor:
I think most of the students would probably kill us if we did that. But no, but what we do is we really teach some concrete strategies and a variety of strategies that will help them have agency and really do many of those things for themselves. The nice thing is that our residential staff connects with our academic advisors regularly, so when a student is having a pattern of missing class, I mean we all miss things for one reason or another my team members or whatever. But when we see the pattern, our residential staff I mean they’ve done this proactively, but they’ll go back and say, okay, what are your strategies for getting up in the morning? If you’re some that have worked for other students. I mean, let’s try a few, because strategies are a little bit of guess and check which one meets that particular person So we provide those different strategies so that they can develop, transfer those skills to be in the workplace in later in life.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So, Mary, switching over to you, I know you folks, you know. So, for those who aren’t familiar, CIP has a bunch of locations and so students live in – is it mostly apartments? So go ahead and talk about how you support them in the residential piece.
Mary Sokolowski:
It’s so it’s if they’re all in apartments, right. So here’s the thing about CIP. For starters is, if you’re young adult, your student wants to live in a dorm, that’s not at all CIP, right. So we don’t have any dorms and it’s also kind of a question of where your young adult is and what you and they want to get out of their transition and next steps. Because CIP is going to have a pretty very robust independent living skills support. So in living in the apartments there’s ILS coaches, life skills coaches who come into the apartments throughout the day, morning and evening, and the students are doing all their own cooking, all their own cleaning. They’re independent apartment living. You know they’re living in a little town, they have roommates, they have housemates, they all have their own room. So they love having singles but they all have their own room. But they have to negotiate. You know, living in a, I guess it’s closer to living in a suite, like in a college, only they are cleaning and doing all that. So everything from meal planning to housemate meetings you know weekly housemate meetings facilitated by staff. So there’s a lot of staff support for that independent living piece, so that the independent living doesn’t absorb everything. They are getting structure and support in that. So the way I like to phrase it is they’re doing their work, life skills, in the apartments for the most part and they come to the CIP Center, which is walking distance. They do a couple of classes with us. Okay, so they do executive function classes, they do, they will do a life skills class, they’ll do social skills classes and they’ll get coaching in those areas life skills, social skills, executive function. They’ll have an advisor who’s working with them on some of the very nitty gritty of executive function like calendaring and budget, and they have weekly advisor meetings and then they’re either on this academic or career track and the students who are getting on the academic track are getting academic coaching both at CIP as well as on campus, because our academic coordinator actually goes up to. If our students are attending Berkshire Community College and this is just for the Berkshire Center, I should say, because other centers work it out different ways at the Berkshire Center our academic coordinator is on campus and will help students physically navigate the campus as well as work with on academic coaching. We don’t do tutoring right because the college right, so we, but we make sure that the students take advantage of it right either by getting it on their calendar, making sure they have follow through. The other big piece I think about CIP for our students is the accountability piece in terms of there’s attendance. You know we take attendance at every single session our students have and if they start to drop below certain levels, you know they can miss a few things. Obviously they’re young adults. We want to treat them that way, but we will do follow up and put plans in place for them with them to say, oh well, why is it? Because we might find like, as Adam was saying, there’s a little bit of like experimentation going on. Well, why is it that you’re missing your 9am coaching session three times a week? Well, maybe you’re going to bed and up playing video games until three o’clock in the morning and maybe we got to work on that.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
No pots and spoons in the apartments for you guys either. No wake up calls?.
Mary Sokolowski:
Well, if students need them, right? So we have evening supports every night to help students set up for their next day. But if students really need a morning support, they can get a morning support, which is actually enough on the door. A lot of our students don’t need it. That I would say. Our students are like it’s a very niche. At the same time, there’s so much diversity amongst our students. We’ve got 41 students at Berkshire and over 60 at our Berkeley campus and the range of the types of students that we have in the program is actually quite diverse. So some of them are going to need that morning support. Some of them are absolutely not going to need it, right, and so we’re not going to provide supports where they’re not needed, I guess.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So, Anne-Marie and Brittany, any wake up calls from you guys to students?
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Nope. They’re college students there they’re living in dorms. I mean, I will say that we do work with students on kind of dorm organization, dorm norms, communication, dorm norms. How, what, how’s that going to affect your roommate and how can we help you with that? If students are in Boston, we do support them in person. We can because we’re based in Boston but everywhere else it’s virtual. So we do a lot of residential support during our summer cohort because we have a three week summer program that’s at Simmons University, so it’s on college campus. They’re living in dorms, so that is almost kind of a first step to getting them more than you to go to not have the pots banging in the fall.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
I know I feel like I’m very old. My husband would probably take out his cell phone and he’s probably got a bell app. He would ring instead. So you know I’m old school. And Brittany, what about SALT? You guys go through the day you’re You’re on campus. Do you go through the dorms?
Brittany Cortinas:
We do not, so we we are have a fully integrated model, so our students are in with everybody else and it much like and re. Our students are college students. They’re in the dorm. It’s expected that they would be able to get themselves up and arrange their schedule to if they need night classes rather than morning classes because they want to sleep late. However, if they are finding that they’re having trouble or they’re getting up or they’re not sure if their schedule is right for them, based on their needs, that’s something that we do. Work with them to figure out strategies that best help them cope or adjust their schedule. We spend a lot of time working on organization and time management with our students.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Sure, and so I want to circle back to something that Mary said, because I think sometimes people will hear Mary said that they are on campus at the Berkshire campus, campus, whatever, sorry. And so one of the things that has come up sometimes parents asked me or when I was doing the interviews from my book which I forgot to mention. So Seven Steps to College Success Pathway for Students with Disabilities, where we talk about supports, and I’ve interviewed a bunch of these folks and Landmark very distinctly no accommodations, because the whole environment is designed for students with disabilities. Right, you don’t have a disability services office Adam?
Adam Lalor:
We don’t have. We do offer accommodations. Generally they’re more residential based rather than for the academic curriculum we have a lot of. Meanwhile, we focus on students with learning disabilities, ADHD and autism. There are students that come in with a variety of other disabilities, that different accommodation. So we will do that.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So what I was thinking of was when, when I was interviewing folks in the book. One of the things that they wonder is like, for instance, Brittany, if a student registers with University of Arizona’s SALT Disability Services Office and, for instance, gets turned down for, and this is common, extended time for papers and projects, which is not something that a lot of students with learning disabilities, ADHD and autism get? This is all anecdotal. This is my experience of what I see in our community, so sometimes families think well, but if I pay for the fee based program, or if Mary’s on campus First of all Brittany, if I register with SALT, do I now get access to accommodations that maybe disability services did not approve?
Brittany Cortinas:
Unfortunately no. So all accommodations that are specifically for the classroom go through the Disability Resource Center, so it going through SALT would not provide those additional resources, like the additional test taking time. One of the things that we might suggest for a student if they weren’t able to get that, get that accommodation, is first of all, try again. We do always, there is a lot of there is a lot of discussion with our Disability Resource Center with students and trying to get the things they need. So we might also work on specifically with we have a ton of different tutoring types. Practicing with the student, figuring out how to how they study and how to make maybe test taking a little bit quicker, probably working with the support specialist that we offer to maybe see if the conversation can go a different way with the disability resource center to get the accommodations that they’re looking for. So we might just revisit it over again and then possibly, if we can’t, going through a different way with finding ways to make testing easier.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Okay, yeah, that’s, and that, I think, what you know. The strategies are really important and I just saw a comment on Facebook, so I want to take a moment for those of you who are listening and those who just came in to the live stream. We are talking to Mary Sokolowski of college internship program, Adam Lalor of Landmark College, Anne-Marie Stripling of Focus Collegiate and Brittany Cortinas of the University of Arizona SALT Center. So, Mary, I want to circle back to you, because I do think sometimes, with programs like yours, you actually are on campus but you don’t have any power, so to speak, with the disability services offices at these colleges, correct?
Mary Sokolowski:
Oh no, we don’t have any pull with them, but I think what we do pretty well is work with students so that they’re prepared when they go into their disability services. And we can actually accommodate them. We can actually accompany them. If they feel they need it. They can sign a waiver that enables us, their, their academic coach, to be in that meeting, so that.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And when you’re in those meetings, what do you do?
Mary Sokolowski:
Not a lot, because I mean I don’t actually attend those meetings but okay, we don’t, we’re not allowed to do very much right, we’re more of a prompt and a coach to the actual student. So if they say you know they may not offer also certain, I mean I’m sure that the places that I’m talking to and on this program have great disability resource centers. I was an adjunct professor in community colleges in like five different states and it is grim. So honestly, sorry but it’s, it can be really grim. And it’s not because disability I’m not trashing disability resource services the people who go into that are typically incredibly well-meaning but they’re also, as with everything, completely often understaffed, underpaid etc. Etc. So, especially if a student is taking like the community college route living at home and going to community college and taking one or two classes somebody’s got to really be, I think, with a lot of the students come to CIP really coaching that student on how to get, and I’m sure this is not an issue at any of these programs I know it isn’t because that’s what they’re there for, but at any and a place that doesn’t have a program like this there’s not, there’s not a lot. there really, There just isn’t, I think, in my experience. And so you need to be able to not only have someone who’s going to prepare you for that disability services meeting, making sure you’ve got your documentation, making sure you know what resources are even available to you voice to text, software, note takers, all the different things like no, they’re not going to necessarily offer that up and you’re not going to know, as the student, what your learning style is and the stuff you’ve never heard of and wasn’t on your IEP, whether that’s going to actually benefit you. So we really, you know we’re coming from a perspective where our students start usually very slow in college, one or two classes to begin with, so that they’re really learning everything that’s available to them and how to get it. And then there’s another piece is, if they don’t get it because they sometimes don’t, and I can actually tell stories about that how to advocate for it. Right, and that brings in a lot of different skills and including, you know, building self-esteem and self-confidence, but also social skills like how do I reach out to this professor who is actually not doing what my accommodations are saying and does the professor even have to do those accommodations necessarily right? So there’s, that’s what we’re like. We’re not in a part, we’re not a college based program, so it’s not the colleges that our students attend, thi ethos that everyone in this program has aren’t isn’t typically imbricated into the system, right? So we’re like starting at just a regular old college that doesn’t know anything about special right, about how to do this. So it’s kind of a slightly different approach and so we don’t do. We don’t do hardly anything in the meetings. We don’t do anything with our students grade reports. We can’t, we don’t. But if a student wants to share that with their academic coach, they can share it, and and and if our coach thinks that it would be beneficial, our coaches are empowered to ask. But as you know what our students are also quite empowered to say yeah, no, I’m not showing you my midterm grades, like, okay, you know, or whatever else you know disability report.
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Can I also say something else? With that. It’s not only about getting the accommodations, becoming eligible for the accommodations, because that’s one thing right, that initial meeting you’re going through. You know, this is what I need. This is what I’ve had in the past. It was successful, you know, and I need to continue to have that. It’s also about accessing and implementing what those accommodations are in the fall. So, for example, extra time. I get extra time on tests and I’m also testing at a testing center. For example, a lot of students struggle with like, okay, but now I as the student have to set that up right every class, right every test. Yeah, if you have executive functioning challenges, whoa, that’s a lot to do, and so for our students, it’s helping them connect those dots. It’s helping them know how they can access those and implement them and then doing that over time so that, okay, after a time they got it, that they know what they’re doing. It’s fine. But that’s a really important piece for students to understand. It’s not like in high school where it just kind of magically happens.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Yeah, and I just want to say, you know, to Mary’s earlier comment. So you know, yes, the people working in my field I’m gonna stand up for disability services offices are wondering. I know, and she’s she’s for those listening, she’s making a face. She was just saying there’s sometimes one person offices for several hundred students and there are just things they don’t have time to do and so, for instance, typically when a student has and this varies based on how a college runs the testing accommodations at a lot of colleges again, I don’t have stats for you I always try to make sure I can mention those. When students have exams, they have to fill out a form that tells disability services the name of the professor, the time that the exam is supposed to happen, then maybe the name of the class, and submit it to us. Because we are not and this is the difference between K through 12 and college we’re not monitoring several hundred students’ schedules, we are not communicating with their professors to ask them about this stuff. It is the student’s responsibility and so, as happens absolutely everywhere all the time, students sometimes come to us the day before, sometimes the day of an exam with their form. We just literally can’t arrange it in that amount of time. And so a really important difference between K through 12 and special ed is, like you know, if the record does not come to, you know, to a screeching halt, everybody stops, drops everything to go make sure this will happen. Student just doesn’t get accommodated at that for that specific exam and then hopefully will implement things. But what everybody’s talking about here, about Mary and Ann Marie, about, like, okay, what are strategies for coping with that? Many of us don’t have the time to teach students that. You know. I only get to see my students if I see them every week. It’s for a half an hour and so there’s just not always the time to do that. Brittany, do you folks help students with this sort of administration, part administrative parts of college life?
Brittany Cortinas:
Yes, so we we would focus this would be a role for our support specialists, who they meet with our students similarly for 30 minutes every week and can assist with some of the more administrative parts. We really focus on self-advocacy, so really trying to push our students into feeling comfortable pursuing it themselves because, again, their college students they’re, they’re over 18, so mostly they have to speak for themselves. So we do things like practicing conversations. So in times where they have to speak to financial aid or they might have to speak to a professor because the professor isn’t giving them their support, our support specialists will sit them down and go through examples of conversations, things that where conversation can go great, or the conversation they get pushed back and they they practice those things, then give them examples of things to ask and then our support specialists will always follow up with them. And that’s the biggest thing, it’s never a. It’s always a warm handoff and a warm return, checking in to make sure that they got what they needed. So we really focus on trying to help with that administrative stuff. But it does come that sometimes we can’t do anything because they are adults and they have to handle it. So we really try to push it back into their hands with, with fully equipped with what they could possibly say and what they could do.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
That’s awesome. Yeah, the self-advocacy piece is really important and, and going back again to something Mary said about professors not honoring accommodations for those who are new to this, if disability services has approved accommodations, I’m gonna say very generally, professors have to provide them. They they’re. So professors don’t always know what the law is, they don’t always get training, they don’t always realize that their objections will stand, and so, unfortunately, it is very often on the student to come back to their disability services coordinator, whoever their liaison is, and say professor Hamblet said no to my ability to record her class, and so, again, that takes self-advocacy, it takes a certain level of self-esteem and also initiation. So one of these terms that we’ve been throwing around, or activation, like you gotta do it when the professor tells you that not at the end of the term and not after the term is over. And you know the office for civil rights is the one that students, one of the places students can go when they’ve had a problem, and they can, you know lodge a complaint and there will be an investigation that looks to see okay, when did the student tell DS that they didn’t get their accommodation? And they’re gonna close an investigation if they find out how late students got to this. So, as you are thinking about college for your student or you’re working with students who want to go to college, these are the kinds of skills that go so far beyond, because there are a lot of students who are very good at doing school and, in quotation marks, they’re very good at the academic piece, and loving supportive families sort of fill in the blanks everywhere else, and we don’t want them to fall off this cliff when they come to us.
Adam Lalor:
Yeah, it’s related to all of this and the reality is sometimes I mean very, very small percentage of students on with who are neurodivergent when they get to college actually disclose. One thing is pretty clear, and it’s for a myriad of reasons that that I won’t go into, but sometimes they don’t avail themselves of the supports and sometimes it’s because they don’t they’re available. Yeah, yeah, so it really. I mean IDEA, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, does have transition planning as a requirement. Yeah, so when we’re, when our students are in secondary education, whether they have an IEP or or on a 504, really parents and educators should be encouraging and setting transition goals to help them with these processes. Before a student goes off to college, what are the processes, the things they have to do to be successful, to access accommodation? Knowing that no one’s going to seek them out to schedule things, and then giving them opportunities to practice these behaviors in secondary education I mean very few of us, even as adults, when the first time around doing something we’re not great at it, it doesn’t mean we stumble a little bit. I mean so, like with my own children. I mean they’re in middle school now. One of the things I really try to get them to do and I work with some of their teachers to do is, when they have a test, not just assume that things are going to be there, but talk with their teacher before every test and explain to them and start engaging in those little behaviors. I mean, the hardest thing to do is to talk about something that oftentimes they’re bullied about, discriminated against so talking about and being open and figuring out the ways to do it that they’re comfortable with and they feel confident in is so important
Mary Sokolowski:
I just want to say something about that, Adam, because it’s really, you know, it’s. This is for the parents out there who, who I’m sure many of them are pretty learned in the difference between an IEP and accommodations, or an IEP and post-secondary education. One of the big pieces I found that, as a professor, really impacted me is that I don’t know if I may get accommodations requests as a professor, but I don’t get a diagnosis. So the, the, the, the burden is 100% on the student to disclose, right. It’s not like I look at IEPs. The diagnosis is on an IEP, isn’t it Right? I look at them for living, other health impaired, right.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Categories yeah, yeah, the 13 categories, yeah.
Mary Sokolowski:
Professors do not know this, first of all. Second of all, unless they’re at Landmark. And again, I, you know, I’m kind of like a me, me, I talk a lot, but not only are they not, they’re not getting any training. Professors don’t not only get not trained and how to teach neurodivergent students, they don’t get trained and how to teach. Period. So like it’s just like a different, like it really like we talk about the falling off the cliff and we’re talking about like a lot of the details, but the cultural shift from secondary to post-secondary and I maybe you’re going there, Elizabeth, but like that’s what like it keeps coming back to me this cultural shift between and I like to, I think I would think of it as the difference in how to learn, how to become an independent learner, right, yeah, right? Anyway, I’ll pause there because I I don’t want to take up all the time.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Well, if you would Brittany go ahead.
Brittany Cortinas:
Addressing what you just said, or, Mary, what you just said. That’s one of the things that I experienced that was so crazy to me in the College of Science is that these were researchers who are suddenly teaching. They’re not teachers, They’ve never been trained. These are. These are researchers who have been thrown into classroom. One thing that I did want to want to mention, at least for at least for the University of Arizona, because we do have quite a big, big disability resource center. Every single one of our students is also assigned an access consultant, which, if they are having issues getting their accommodations enforced in the classroom, first of all they would recommend a student try to handle it, and if they cannot, then they can go to their access consultant and they start mediating between the professor. That’s something I haven’t seen a lot of other colleges and I hope that starts becoming bigger, but that’s something that we’re doing at the university.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And so, generally. You know, again, more than 4,000 colleges in the country. I can’t speak for all of our colleagues, but you know when this happens and hopefully a lot of your students are going to get through and there’s never going to happen to them, so I don’t want to make this seem like a bigger deal. This is a perfect example, though, of you know the adulting part of thinking ahead. So you know and again, it probably won’t occur to most you know incoming freshmen that this could be a problem, but you know, it would be nice if my colleagues were telling them, when they register with us and get their approvals, what to do in this case. But again, this is all the help seeking. You know, which is part of the self advocacy. But I did. I’m going to do a hot take here and disagree with Mary on something, so you ready? So Mary said that it’s the students burden to tell professors about their disability. I come out this from a completely different lens of it is their freedom not to have their professors know what their disability is. And because she for those of you who are listening, she’s on mute but she’s nodding. So again, I don’t want to put words in Mary’s mouth, but I think it’s a really important point. Our letters or our notifications to professors just say Dear Professor Stripling, Elizabeth Hamlet is a student in your class. Here are the accommodations we have approved her for. So very differently from K through 12. Most of us do not say in the letter what the student’s disability is, so it is their decision to disclose more or not. And because of the research showing that a lot of students come to us as I started like, first of all, just never register. And when, when researchers talk to them and ask why some of it is, I want to be a new person, I want to shed this label, I want to be free of this. They don’t want to be seen as lesser than and I. That just hurts my heart that they think professors will. But there are all kinds of people out there and also just that you know it’s just privacy. You know they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re going to their new space and they want to just present whatever they want to present, and so it’s important to let students know that if they register with us, that information is not going to come from us. Now, you know, sometimes I jokingly say if you are a student with the hyperactive form of ADHD and you decide, as many of them do, to go off your meds when you start college because you’re going to try this out. It’s possible your professors will observe that you perhaps might have hyperactive ADHD. So, but for those with what we call non-apparent disabilities, it’s none of, it’s nobody’s business, and if professors press them, they’re not under any obligation to tell professors what their disability is. That’s their information, please, Anne-Marie.
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Well, the professors don’t know, but your advisors don’t know either, Like your academic advisors let’s say you’re going into a program and your professors saying, okay, here’s the course progression for this major and you know, hey, I have a math disability and I really don’t want to take math for a semester, and that’s being put out there. You don’t have to necessarily go into that conversation with the advisor and say, hey, I have a math disability, hi, how you’re doing. You can really advocate for yourself in a different way. Math is not a strength for me. Is there a way I can hold that to the next term? Because, again, your advisor doesn’t have that information either. But it really is about knowing that nobody knows that except for disability support services. And how can I advocate in the way that is the most comfortable for me, to advocate for what I need? We see that a lot with students.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So I’m watching the clock and I’m getting sweaty because I could talk to you folks all day, but there are a couple of points I really want to make sure I cover. So I’m going to ask you to answer these. I think it’s three questions, each one at a time. So, Brittany, we’ll start with you. What kind of student is a good match for your program? What kind of student will not find it effective? And the really important one, people want to know do you communicate with parents and under what circumstances? So go for it.
Brittany Cortinas:
Absolutely so. Number one the students who are best for our program. We really focus on that mild to moderate learning and attention differences, the biggest thing I always tell parents about. Parents ask what will get my student declined. We can’t take a student who would not be able to get them selves to class. We wouldn’t be able to take a student who cannot be a campus alone, who would need someone living with them and directing them. They do have to have a level of independence. After that we look at all students. I’m so sorry. What was the second question?
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So who is a good match?
Brittany Cortinas:
A good match Again. A student with that mild to moderate learning difference. A student who’s able to communicate what they need, even if it’s not, you know, I need this specific type of tutoring and this is how I learn and I need this. Just a student who can be like I have trouble sitting still, what can I do from here? Being able to communicate something like that and being willing to come to us. We have students who won’t make the first step and they do have to do that, so they have to be at least invested in themselves and willing to come to us. That’s going to be the best kind of student. After that, we take all majors, we take all students who are interested in being in college and being here and then so, with this, talking to parents specifically, we don’t. A student is 18 and they are able to keep the conversations that they have with our support specialists and our team between themselves and their specialists. However, we do have a waiver that a student can choose to sign to be a part of the. Have their parents be a part of the conversation. That’ll say, a parent can call our support specialist and ask what’s going on, or they’ll get an email after some of the support specialist meetings. Or if a parent does reach out to us and say I really would like to know what’s going on, our support specialist will actually straight out ask the student hey, your parents are wondering what’s going on. Can we include them in a Zoom meeting today, Like you and I are meeting in person? But let’s have them come by a Zoom and they can hear what we’re discussing and what your goals are. Ultimately, the student does get to choose whether they are going to approve of that or not, but we do try to make those avenues available because sometimes students also don’t know that. Hey, yeah, my parents could be a part of this conversation.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And you don’t provide progress reports right to parents.
Brittany Cortinas:
We do not. No.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Okay, Anne-Marie, who’s a good match, who’s not a good match? And do you talk to parents?
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Sure. So who’s a good match? Similar to Brittany, somebody who is motivated to be in college, wants to be in college, is taking college classes, because those are the students that we work with. I would also say students who are open to getting support. Right, that you know we, we. They can be nervous about that a little bit, but they need to at least be open to working with us actively. Bad match is somebody who’s maybe not ready for college, needs more support than what we can provide. I mean, we’re meeting with students several times a week I would say two to four times a week, usually on average and so it is a lot of support. But if they need more support than that, maybe they’re not ready to live in the dorms yet. That’s okay, but that’s probably not a student for us. Parent support. You know parents need scaffolding, just as students do. So we do work with parents. We do twice a month parent education sessions, and so sometimes that’s about student motivation and sometimes that’s about hey, what’s happening in the midterm of the semester for your students? Right, we do provide weekly updates to parents, but the weekly updates are not every single thing that is happening in that student’s life. We want the parents to know enough so that they feel comfortable about how things are working with the student, and also enough to start stepping down and letting go and moving on.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Does that include student grades?
Ann-Marie Stipling:
It does at the end of a semester, for sure. Generally, you know, we like to give students the opportunity to have the whole semester to get where they need to go. Also, and again, you know I love professors, but sometimes some professors are really great at putting in their grades all throughout the semester. some are not, so sometimes that information the professors are to ascertain, and so we do work with parents. A fair amount I mean obviously we’re going to the onus is on the student. The student has to agree to that. We have some students who don’t have parents involved. That’s okay too, right. So we want to have that conversation with the student, because they are in the driver’s seat.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Adam, Who’s a good match, who’s not a good match? And do you talk to parents?
Adam Lalor:
Yeah, I mean, who’s a good match at Landmark? I mean it’s really broad. What we’re really looking for is someone who is college capable when we use that term instead of college ready because frankly, so many of us, even neurotypical or a neurodivergent we’re not ready for college.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
I agree, I agree.
Adam Lalor:
What we’re looking for is someone who really, if given the support, if given skill development whether it’s executive function, social skills could be college ready. We’ll work with you on that. So we’re looking for someone who may or may not think that college is right for them, but they’re interested enough to give it a shot. And we have to remember a lot of these students have had really awful educational experiences, experienced educational trauma. So why go on for another four years, right?
Elizabeth Hamblet:
What doesn’t sound fun about that?
Adam Lalor:
I mean, the first and foremost thing that we try to do with our students is to help them rekindle a little love for learning, and then oftentimes their motivation goes up. So we’re looking for students who are college capable. We’re not. I mean, despite having a tremendous number of really wraparound supports for students, we are not a therapeutic institution. I mean that’s not what our skill set is. Many of our services, frankly, would support those students, but we don’t have, we have a tremendous counseling team, but we don’t have hundreds of counselors on our campus. So really, those are the things that we’re looking for and the things that we hope our students bring. In terms of parents and families, we work tremendously with families. We don’t view them as helicopter parents, we don’t view them as burden, so we really view them as collaborators on supporting their child or young adult. So we will oftentimes well, I should say the majority of our students sign for waivers or family education rights and privacy act waivers that allow us to talk with their parents. Advisors are typically the primary group who will be the direct liaison with the parents because they have regular meetings with our students, understand that both are academic and their co-curricular lives. We do extensive parent orientation. We bring them on, oftentimes during the summer months to be online to start getting them ready. We then have the parent orientation on campus during our family weekend. Our advisors, our students and our parents will actually have meetings and they’ll get together and talk about different things going on. And most recently, actually this month, we’ll be launching what we call the Landmark College Family Resource Hub, which is not only for our parents but for parents and families externally, really to provide them trainings and skills related to secondary education, the transition to college, and that’ll be available on our lconlinelandmark. edu platform. Good yeah, we love parents.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And Mary Good match, not good match in parents.
Mary Sokolowski:
Okay, so good match Some of the things people have already said motivated and specifically it’s the IP’s case motivated to be in a program that’s college, potentially college, potentially career, and you’re also gonna do a lot of work in independent living, social skills et cetera. So that motivation acceptance of diagnosis it doesn’t have to be like intense rah-rah, like I’m gonna go be like the activist, but they have to have some level of acceptance of their diagnosis, importantly because they have to be able to accept everyone else in the program as well. So we really look at some level of self-acceptance, which we’re then gonna continue to work on. And so those are really and I would say most of the students are at CIP right now are kind of college capable and what Adam was saying they don’t have to be, but most of them are. Bad matches are if you really want a college environment, if you really want to live in a dorm, like as I said at the very beginning, like don’t struggle to get your kid to agree to CIP if they really want to be on a college campus. Also, sort of not at all accepting of diagnosis, like really fighting that. That doesn’t really work in our model. We’re not there to bring them along to that first stage of acceptance. There has to be a seed of that at the very least. Certainly, because we’re a transition program, not just a college, so things like significant behavioral disabilities or things that are violent, any of that kind of stuff, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, those kind of things we are not equipped for that. We’re not really equipped for students with intellectual disabilities and or, as Adam was saying, significant mental health issues. Every student does see a CIP therapist once a week. Do think it’s helpful, because they’re informed. They’re ASD and LD informed therapists, so they’re not doing just like what any random therapist will do, which doesn’t always work with our students. No offense to random therapists. I feel like I’ve. Like professors, discipline, you all are terrible people. No, I’m not. I’m not. I’m just saying it’s about like being informed. And then parents yes, we absolutely talk to parents, but we don’t share anything with parents that the students aren’t gonna share themselves. So students and parents have a weekly at the beginning of the program. They have a weekly call with the student and the advisor and the parent and the student chooses what to disclose and what not to disclose. We’ll never disclose anything the student doesn’t want to. They’re all 18, and that would be a gross violation in many, many ways. But we also do quite a bit of parent education, often in those advising sessions right. Setting expectations and things like that. So we talk to parents quite a bit but we don’t report on students, if that makes sense.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And I was just thinking Vicki, of I think it was Lynn who said in one of your recent episodes, talked about setting a schedule of communication with your student when they’re going to college. I loved that idea. I’m so old that I just called home on Sunday nights because long distance rates were cheaper, so that was our schedule. (Vicki -From the phone booth down the hall.) I remember those. Yeah, so anyway again, I could go on with you forever and I apologize for those watching this on Facebook. I said I’d take questions. I did see one about dual enrollment, but this is overtaxing my working memory and my executive functioning, so I also think it’s a very specific question, not so much about these programs, so, but for people who want to do follow-ups, let us know. We’ll go around again. How can people get in touch with you, Brittany?
Brittany Cortinas:
I muted myself and then couldn’t find it. So we can be reached at salt. arizona. edu. That’s our website. You’ll find my information there, but I can also throw out my email. It’s bm-c-o-r-t-i-n@a rizona. edu, I’m the primary contact for people who are interested in the SALT Center and our services and I know a little bit about everything about the University of Arizona. So if you are interested in our program and you’re learning more about us, please contact me or go onto our website, where I’m frequently doing virtual info sessions. We do in person and the U of A because it’s the prime season for people coming to college is doing. We’re doing a ton of on-campus events that I’ll be participating in as well.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Wonderful. Mary, you’ve known my rotation.
Mary Sokolowski:
All right. So our website is cipworldwide. org and you can find me if you go there, right. But if you want to reach out to me directly, two things. My email is msokolowski, m-s-o-k-o-l-o-w-s-k-i at cipworldwide. org and I’m gonna give you my work phone number. It’s 413-344-4109, extension 21. Call me anytime.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Wow. Adam.
Adam Lalor:
Yeah, the best place to go is landmark. edu, which is our main website. If you have specific questions about really any of our programs, whether it’s our online on-campus undergraduate dual enrollment, short-term programs or the program that I oversee, our certificate program for educators, you can email admissions (with an-s) at landmark. edu, or, if you wanna get in touch with me directly, my email is adamlalor(1word)@landmark. edu.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
And that’s L-A-L-O-R.
Adam Lalor:
You got it, thank you.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
Anne-Marie.
Ann-Marie Stipling:
Yes, you can go to our website at focuscollegiatecom. You can find me there, but you can also email me at annemarie a-n-n-m-a-r-i-e at focuscollegiate. com. My phone number is 617-807-0055.
Elizabeth Hamblet:
So feel free reach out anytime, and I wanna thank Anne-Marie particularly. She and I cooked this up together in the fall and she helped bring on Mary, so I wanna thank you all for participating. I think it’s such a good conversation. Just generally, no matter what kind of path students are taking and families are looking at, you have brought up so many important skills and things we need to be thinking about for college. What was that again? College capable and college readiness, which are two different things. And thank you to Vicki for inviting me on here. Thanks for those of you who are listening. This is my first attempt at hosting a podcast and I’ve already run over the time. So for college parents central listeners, I know this is longer than you’re used to. I apologize. I will get better with practice. Thanks everybody, we’ll take every minute. Thanks so much, Vicki. Thanks for listening. Thanks guys, thank you, thank you, thanks everybody.
