Syracuse University and the Syracuse City School District are offering opportunities to young people who are developmentally disabled through their OnCampus program, allowing high school seniors to take classes at the university.

The OnCampus program launched in the fall of 2001 and provides classes at SU for students between the ages of 18 and 21 who have mental disabilities and attend school in the Syracuse City School District. It is designed to be a gateway into the InclusiveU program and to provide these students with skills and social and academic developments for after high school.

It’s important that students with disabilities are exposed to an accelerated academic environment like college classes. Programs like these are critical for SCSD students to succeed and there needs to be more programs for students with disabilities.

Both the OnCampus program and InclusiveU provide students with developmental disabilities with mentors to help them with their homework, planning and classes. While the OnCampus program hires mentors with more experience working with disabilities, InclusiveU strives to involve SU students in the mentorship as well.

“It’s a good program for people, for parents who have students who are in their last year of high school to really reach out to get their children to experience the college campus,” said Wanda Beech, who has been an OnCampus mentor for 12 years and has worked in the SCSD district for over 30 years. “It seems to me like behaviors, and everything changes once they come to college for the better, for themselves.”

Beech said she is currently working with a student that has trust issues and that she specially requested him because she wants to help him with those. Another mentor, Dan Wade, is working with Amir Utley, 20, who has been in the program for two years and plans on completing his third and final year starting next fall.

“It’s a new challenge where, at the high school level, we just follow our daily schedules,” said Wade. “But, at this level we are instructing and teaching the students to become more independent, work on their own, so they can eventually be more independent without us totally with them at all times.”

Wade’s mentee, Utley, said that he loves the program and describes him and Wade as “two peas in a pod”. He wants to pursue his interest in food by working for McDonalds upon graduation and will be taking a cooking class in the spring.

While the program does not offer an official diploma, it does offer students a certificate that many workplaces are beginning to recognize. Students can take up to six credits per semester and work with their mentors to design a plan specific to them and their learning style.

“Pre-COVID we were at 100% employment for students six months post-grad,” said Sam Roux, the academic coordinator for InclusiveU, the program that OnCampus students can apply to be a part of upon completion of their program. “So, students were able to find work that fit their interests that was sustainable for them. With COVID that number went down, as it did with the rest of the general population. We are slowly seeing that number work back up and it’s in the 90s right now, which is great to see.”

Beech explained that a typical day in the OnCampus program begins with a bus ride in at 7:30 a.m., breakfast in Huntington Hall and a current events discussion. This is followed by half of the students beginning classes by 8:30 a.m. and the other half going upstairs to do homework and study before classes.

Even though students in these programs are not exactly getting what someone would consider the typical college experience, they are still heavily involved in campus life and have many opportunities to connect with other students. Getting more programs like this is so pivotal because students with these disabilities are not often given the chance to interact with others their age without disabilities in an academic setting. These programs help them feel like they belong, while also encouraging them to become more independent and excel in whatever they want.

“A vast majority of them [the mentors] are SU students,” said Roux. “We think that’s important because our students want to see folks in the same age range and they want to be spending time with people who they can build more pure relationships with. Also, SU students know their way around, have that social capital and have friend groups that they can get our students into.”

Peer2Peer pairs SU students with InclusiveU students to get together and socialize by getting coffee, working out, or anything that the students think will bring them closer together. Both InclusiveU and OnCampus have weekly activities for their students and InclusiveU just formed their first registered organization on campus, Special Olympics Unified Sports.

“The priorities and the challenges that our students have are pretty well aligned with the rest of the student population,” said Roux. “And I think that’s what makes this work. It’s what makes this tough, but it’s also what makes it work.”

Mentors help make these students’ lives easier by attending classes with them, ensuring they get their work done on time and modifying their learning schedules for them. While some students require more attention, like Utley who needs a one-to-one mentor experience, others receive space in class to become more independent.

“The things that make me happy are we see growth without a paper and pencil test,” said OnCampus Coordinator Michele Krak. “When we, you know, ask them to do something and we might have to model it first and after a week or two, they can do it independently- those are the true victories that are not seen, again, in textbooks or in classrooms, but they’re seen in daily living skills and independent living skills.”

Programs like these are well-developed at SU, but many universities still have no or very few programs in place for students who are developmentally disabled. Educators and administrators believe these programs need to continue to grow in popularity and acceptance.

“These kinds of programs really should be normalized across the country because they set us up for a society that’s more inclusive and that gives more people a chance to be successful in that post-school world that we all eventually have to be in,” said Roux.

By creating more programs like InclusiveU and OnCampus around the world, people with developmental disabilities will feel more included and will have opportunities that they do not have in most schools. I think Syracuse has taken a step in the right direction, but needs to encourage more change and help other schools create programs like these.

Skylar Swart is a senior political science major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at saswart@syr.edu. She can be followed on Twitter at @SkylarSwart.

Published on November 8, 2022 at 10:59 pm