UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State World Campus academic adviser Terry Watson said he used to "hit a brick wall" when he spoke to students with military backgrounds about seeking disability services.
“I knew the disability part, and I knew what online learning was like, but I knew nothing about being a veteran,” said Watson, assistant director of Academic Advising and Student Disability Services for Penn State’s online programs.
Although many of the students he spoke to had observable disabilities, they would shut down because of his lack of familiarity with military culture and lingo, and decline to go through the process of seeking accommodations, he said.
Watson, working with colleagues who did have military backgrounds, created the Veteran Online Students with Disabilities project in 2012 to explore ways of connecting with those students, which led to a dramatic increase in the numbers of military students willing to talk to the team about accommodations.
On July 26, the 33rd anniversary of the signing of the historic Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, that experience with veterans informs the entire World Campus disability services team and its approach to the more than 900 students it serves. More than a third of those students are veterans or active military, said Watson.
One academic adviser on every World Campus advising team is trained to become a disability representative, a practice Watson said is unusual at large universities like Penn State. The disability representatives look at ways of improving policies and programs within each academic department as well as assisting with individual student cases.
Recently, disability representatives worked to streamline the process for students who need to make course substitutions for requirements such as a foreign languages. In the past, students were responsible for navigating their own substitution approval, and the process could take months, Watson said. Now, with a newly mapped-out procedure for how advisers, faculty and students can work together, the approval process can be completed in a few days.
Kim Reiker, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in May through World Campus, lost her sight in 2007, when she was in her early 30s. Reiker, who graduated on the Dean’s List and plans to go on to graduate school to become a teacher of the blind and visually impaired, said the Student Disability Services team helped ensure that her assigned texts were accessible through a screen reader and checked in with her regularly to see what other kind of help she might need.
“The ability to reach out when I had a problem made a difference,” she said. “It made me feel like I had a whole team to go to.”
Watson says the veterans project taught him the importance of looking at the whole student, not just their disabilities, and going beyond equity to a holistic concept referred to as disability justice. Knowing about a student’s disabilities isn’t enough, he said.
“I want to know, why did they come to Penn State? Why World Campus? What do they hope to do after they graduate? Do they live in a rural area?" said Watson. "What I learned from the VOSD project is how important that other information is.”
For example, said Watson, it can be important that he knows the age of students he works with, “not because of ageism,” he said, but because of the different experiences different students will have had. An older student who went to school before the ADA passed in 1990 may not be familiar with the accommodations available to them.
If you don’t get to understand the student holistically, said Watson, “you’re losing the majority of the person."