Disability Mentoring Day
Students with disabilities explore career possibilities
11:24 a.m., Oct. 31, 2011--Those who stopped by Walgreens on Main Street on Oct. 19, a dreary and rainy day, might have seen Oliver Dynes setting up a colorful and inviting display at the end of one of the aisles. With his coach, staff member Deanna Pedicone of the University of Delaware Center for Disabilities Studies, giving him encouragement and direction, Dynes followed the pre-set pattern of breakfast items to complete the display.
Dynes is not a Walgreens employee. As one of 15 young adults with disabilities who participated in Delaware’s third annual Disability Mentoring Day, he was carrying out a new task, with store manager Brent Godwin as his supervisor.
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The Center for Disabilities Studies partnered with the city of Newark and local businesses to host this national program that connects about 20,000 students and job seekers with disabilities to employers and businesses for on-site job shadowing and career exploration.
Newark Mayor Vance Funk, III, welcomed Disability Mentoring Day participants at a breakfast hosted by the Marriott Courtyard Newark at the University of Delaware, as he has in past years. He noted that this is always a special day for him and that he’s still in touch with the person who shadowed him in 2009.
Funk shared his experience with a disability that resulted from a stroke 18 years ago, and gave this advice: “It’s so important that you try to advance your skills—all of us can.”
Following the breakfast, each participant and his or her coach moved on to a job shadowing experience on campus or in the community. Jonathan Pote remained at the Courtyard, where he and his coach, UD senior Hannah Evans, met with engineering and transportation supervisor Greg Caldwell.
Caldwell showed Pote how he starts every day by checking the computer for projects that need to be done, took him to the hotel’s engineering workshop, and involved him in a project to measure the vestibule area for a new mat. Although Pote has considerable experience with construction and repair projects, he indicated that prior to Disability Mentoring Day, he “never thought about working in a hotel before.”
Andie Downes, who wants to work with wild animals one day, got a taste of some tamer species during her job shadowing experience in a UD Department of Animal and Food Sciences laboratory with lab coordinator Laura Nemec. One of Downes' experiences involved weighing some chicks that are subjects in a student experiment to determine the effects of different feed on growth rates. Graduate student Michelle Finegan was her coach.
Dynes, Pote and Downes are all students in the University’s new Career and Life Studies Certificate (CLSC) program, as are 10 of the other Disability Mentoring Day participants. CLSC is a federally-funded model demonstration postsecondary program for students with intellectual disabilities. It is part of a $ 2.3 million grant received from the U.S. Department of Education to develop such programs at UD and around the state.
This is the inaugural year for the CLSC program, in which students participate in UD classes and student activities while enrolled in coursework and internships that focus on career studies and life skills. The goal of the program is to build individualized programs that prepare students with intellectual disabilities for successful employment or additional postsecondary education, as well as to provide them with the opportunities that are afforded to students at the University.
“Disability Mentoring Day is a natural fit for our curriculum,” said Wendy Claiser, program coordinator for the CLSC program.
The day concluded with a celebratory lunch and award ceremony at California Tortilla on Main Street. The featured speaker was Sara Wolff, a young woman who advocates for individuals with Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities. She told her inspirational story, noting that “Down Syndrome hasn’t stopped me from doing anything.”
Wolff concluded by encouraging everyone to “be heard, be strong and be proud.”
The Disability Mentoring Day participants had the opportunity to share information about their job sharing experiences as they accepted certificates of completion from CDS staff member Max Kursh, who coordinated the event. Some of the job shadowing hosts also spoke, including Mike Loftus of UD Facilities Grounds Services, who expressed the sentiment that his staff members often get more out the experience than the students they work with.
Campus participants in this year’s Disability Mentoring Day were the REP/PTTP theatre programs, Fred Rust Ice Arena, Environmental Health and Safety, Facilities Grounds Services, Animal and Food Sciences and the Marriott Courtyard hotel. Local businesses included Delaware Book Exchange, Newark Manor Nursing Home, Walgreens, PetKare and CERTS.
UD departments have been instrumental in creating a successful atmosphere for students in UD’s CLSC program throughout the fall semester, as well as for Disability Mentoring Day. Several CLSC students have had opportunities to sit in on UD classes, and many hope to enroll in college courses upon completion of the CLSC program.
Meanwhile, other CLSC students who are looking for employment greatly benefit from the seminars, job-shadowing experiences, internships and paid jobs that they have participated in at the University.
Article by Brian Freedman and Michele Sands
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson