Student Inclusion on College Campuses: Eliminating the Barriers for Students with Disabilities

The current movement in student success initiatives on college and university campuses continues to marginalize students with disabilities. With the population of students with disabilities growing, the supports for those students continue to be on the decline. Students with disabilities who are transitioning into a post-secondary education do not receive adequate guidance and resources in order to achieve successful outcomes. Collaborative planning from a person-first approach across key academic and administrative units throughout the campus can ensure that students with disabilities receive an enriched higher education experience.

Services currently available to students with disabilities have been limited to an exploratory framework to the college transition process. By incorporating the NASPA guiding principles, these students have the opportunity to a gratifying experiential postsecondary environment.

Integrity: Treating students with disabilities with dignity and respect by using person first language and strengths approaches.

Inclusion: We want our students with disabilities to feel a sense of welcoming, belonging, along with opportunities to be activitely engaged in all facets of the collegiate life experience from they moment they enter the campus gates and beyond.

Integrity and Innovation: Through presention of our findings related to the collegiate success of students with disabilities in higher education, we hope to create and have open dialogue regarding changes in policy and services provided by universities. Some examples include academic approaches to interdisciplinary education offerings around courses in disability leadership, collaborative programmatic efforts across offices of disability/accessibility, diversity and inclusion, student success, and UCEDDs.

Inquiry: By highlighting foundational bodies of work: Your Leadership Edge, The Disability Rights Movement, and People First Language, higher education professionals will be equipped with a universal learning framework and tools to being promoting equitable initiatives that integrate the full scope and meaning of culture and (multi)cultural competence on their campuses. 

Learning Outcomes

By participating in this session, attendees will:

• evaluate the current services offered for students with disabilities on college/university campuses;
• use critical thinking skills in order to extract ideas for future work with students with disabilities; and
• gain knowledge, understanding and/or tools they can take back to their respective campuses to initiate collaborative cross-campus efforts that can enhance the collegiate experiences of students with disabilities.