Saint Xavier University’s Learning Center and Disability Services was awarded the Outstanding Post-Secondary Program Award at the 9th Annual Illinois Statewide Transition Conference, which is given to a university or vocational program who has done and exceptional job at helping students with disabilities accomplish their goals of higher education.
What many people do not realize is that the Learning Center and Disability Services are two separate and distinct units of one office that shares a mission which is stated in their brochure as follows, “The Learning Center and Disability Services office provides the academic resources to help students of Saint Xavier University develop the educational strategies and skills to become successful learners and to create an environment that values lifelong learning.”
The Learning Center is here to help students reach academic success in the same way that Disability Services is here to help students who have a disability reach their academic success.
The mission of this office is met through the development of strategies and collaboration with the faculty and staff of Saint Xavier to caters what students both need and want. This can be seen through the Learning Center and Disability Services advisory board, which is composed of faculty, staff, and students to give feedback and ideas to this office, and the Learning Center and Disability Services Faculty Liasons who connects the office directly with Saint Xavier University’s faculty. Director Margaret McDonnell explains that, “We’re always putting new initiatives in place while always remaining accessible to students as we follow the saying ‘success starts here’.
Inevitably, the goal of Disability Services is to not only help students with disabilities to reach academic success while in a post-secondary program, but to help those same students transition into future careers. Receiving this award recognizes the fact that Disability Services not only has the best intentions regarding their students, but that they are excelling at integrating different resources to help them transition into their time here as well as what they will be doing after they leave. In fact, Director McDonnell believes that the reason Disability Services is so successful is because they aim to help students reach, “Success in both academic and nonacademic programs.” While this is a small university, this office has big ideals for students with disabilities.
The reasons why Saint Xavier University’s Disability Services is a good candidate for this award goes beyond what they do for students when they come here to Saint Xavier, and can be traced to how they reach out to students that have disabilities before they attend. Disability Services works with many guidance counselors and special education programs from local schools to ensure that these schools and their students know both what they provide here at Saint Xavier as well as how these services are provided.
To ensure further success and improvement, they have recently become a member of a consortium with other higher education institutes regarding disability services initiatives and the best practices that are at the forefront of disability services to help students become not only immersed in academic skills but also careers and professions. Improvement is often reached by taken into account the needs of specific students by working with and listening to them so that they can be much more proactive.
Catlyn Hicks
Senior News Editor