PrAACtical Resources: Beyond High School

One of the most exciting trends in higher education is a movement to support the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities on college campuses. In today’s post, we’re sharing a resource that is not specific to AAC but may be of interest to many readers.

Think College is a program of the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. They are a national technical assistance, research, and evaluation center dedicated to developing, expanding, and improving higher education options for students with intellectual disabilities. Think College addresses four main areas: raising awareness, increasing post-secondary options, conducting research on best practices, and providing training.

Here are some of the ways they can be helpful.

• You can search a database of more than 300 post-secondary programs.
  • They have a helpful guide to selecting programs that might be a good fit for an individual student.
  • There’s also a Self-Advocates Guide to selecting the right program.  
• They run an Emerging Advocates group that meets four times a year on Zoom. Here’s the link to sign up.
• They support systems change through an Inclusive Higher Education Network.  
• They host webinars on relevant topics and archive many of those here.  
• They produced a 25-minute film on the growing movement of including students with intellectual disabilities in college programs that you can access here. There is also an accompanying viewer’s guide. 
• Curious about what’s going on in your state? Check out their state map.  

There is a lot more to explore on this topic on their website. 

Hat tip to Mike Hipple for alerting us to this powerful organization.