I am posting my week accountability a few days late because after picking Izzy up from preschool on Thursday, I took the girls down to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Last week, I finished up the first draft of the elementary math preparation paper and now just need to spend time editing this. I also received news that the inclusive concurrent enrollment residential pilot initiative was signed off on by the Vice President of Student Success at my university. This means that staring in the fall of 2023 (this upcoming fall), there will be a residential component to our inclusive concurrent enrollment (for students with intellectual disabilities or autism that are 18-21, who are still enrolled in high school but wanting to have some aspects of a college experience) program. This is a big step forward and will allow for more opportunities for this population of student and to really think about neurodiversity and what it means in the university setting.
We first started to formally explore this concurrent enrollment initiative, https://www.mass.edu/strategic/MAICEI.asp, at Salem State with an initial planning grant back in the 2015-2016 school year. Back then we mapped out all the key stakeholder groups at the university the planning committee would meet with. In these meetings we share the possibilities of this opportunity, inviting students with disabilities who were 18-21 years old who were still enrolled in high school due to continued support needed in terms of transition services but were ready for and wanted some aspects of a college experience. We also wanted to know the questions and concerns that each stakeholder group had so we could plan out all aspects of the program and have answers before the students entered the university. I have the data from these meetings and have shared it with other individuals looking to explore this opportunity at their institution. This data, however, was useful, when we approached this new planning grant, as well. It was helpful to see the stakeholders and the mapping of when and how we approached each of these groups the first go-round, so we had a better roadmap to execute the current planning grant that was just signed off on. There, however, was a new kink in the roll-out and approach with COVID and everyone being remote for the last two years—in which we did this planning. We had all of our meetings with stakeholder groups via Zoom and brought in another local sister institution, Bridgewater State, and their planning and execution team to help us trouble shoot and answer questions and concerns different groups at the university brought up. Since I have been on sabbatical this semester the others on the planning team carried this to the final stretch and it was last Sunday that I received news that this planning is coming to fruition which is so—exciting to me. I have been the only full-time faculty member on the planning committee since the inception and to know we are able to offer more services to local school districts, families, and most importantly students that are eager for this opportunity is awesome. During this summer, I’ll do some brainstorming work so that we are ready to open our doors to the first few students we accept—throughout the planning we shared we wanted to be successful so we are starting small and then we will scale to an appropriate size based on capacity to provide high-quality services. I started really diving into the literature, again, on other institutions that have similar residential programs so I could ground myself again in the upcoming work and execution I will get to be a part of.
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AuthorKristina Scott Archives
February 2023
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