Welcome back! Student Accessibility Services would like to let you know about some changes to our website. Not only has the site been updated and redesigned for ease of navigability, we have also added a new section titled Faculty & Staff. Here you will find a suggested syllabus statement regarding students with disabilities and accommodations.
There is also a helpful section on accommodations. Included here is a listing of common accommodations, with a brief explanation of what each one entails as well as typical reasons the accommodation is issued. This sub-section also includes the guidelines students are required to follow when utilizing the accommodation of Use of Recording Device as well as the agreement they sign acknowledging they understand and agree to the appropriate use of the recordings.
We include a reminder that should a faculty member feel that an accommodation compromises an essential element of his or her course or program, he or she should contact SAS as soon as possible to discuss the concerns. Accommodations are not meant to compromise or lower course requirements or expectations.
Accommodation notification deadlines are included in this section as well. While students may request accommodations from SAS at any time, registration with our office and the issuance of accommodations is a process that takes some time. Students are encouraged to register with SAS as soon as practicable after their enrollment at the College and to request their Accommodation Memo for faculty at the start of each semester. Faculty are entitled to reasonable notice (7 business days) of approved accommodations. If a faculty member is provided with an Accommodation Memo with less notice, he or she is not required to provide the approved accommodation in this initial instance if it is not feasible to do so. The accommodation would begin once the professor had appropriate notice and time to make any necessary arrangements.
Speaking of necessary arrangements, this segues well into a reminder to faculty that students should present you with an Accommodation Memo each and every semester they want to use their accommodations in your class. The Memo should be given to you during a private meeting where you and the student can discuss exactly how you will provide the accommodation. For example, if the accommodation is “50% extended time on tests, quizzes, and in-class assignments,” when will that 50% extra time occur? Before class? After class? At a completely different time? What space will be utilized if the classroom is not available for that time? Problems arise when students hand a Memo to a professor and walk away without this discussion since the logistics are still up in the air.
Finally, we have added an Educational Resources section for faculty and staff. It is still fairly small, but we are working on adding new resources. As of right now, you will find a couple of videos (including “How Difficult Can This Be?” which I used during a Camp Teach & Learn workshop I presented on what it is like for students with learning disabilities in the classroom). There is an article written by a retired university faculty member and disability in higher education expert titled “When Faculty Are TOO Accommodating.” This discusses problems that this can cause for the college, faculty member, and student. There is also a section with websites that may be useful to faculty and staff, including a link for The Center for Universal Design in Education. If you have any suggestions for additional resources, please let us know!
We hope you find this new Faculty and Staff section to our website helpful! We hope that you have been finding our blog beneficial as well — you can let any interested colleagues know that they can find a link to our blog in the new Faculty and Staff section as well.
