Providing Access for All Students
Establishing a training program through DAI to educate faculty, staff, and students will enhance the current support for students. The impact of an updated training program focusing primarily on individuals with invisible disabilities will be far-reaching. As an evolution of the previous program design, this program will begin with a student-focused approach and then build out to the remainder of the campus community. This incorporates student leadership in the creation and delivery of training modules. Ultimately, the goal of this program is to create a community of support for students struggling with invisible disabilities.
The first targeted group to receive the training will be students currently employed by Disability, Access, and Inclusion (DAI) and the Dean of Students Office (DOS). This will allow a pilot group of trainees to provide feedback and refine the training. This group of students has extensive interaction with students who are struggling with their mental health, their academics, and/or with challenges in their personal lives. By ensuring that this group of students understands the difficulties experienced by others with invisible disabilities, our student employees will be able to better triage and support the students seeking support from DAI.
Subsequent to the initial pilot training, the first pilot cohort of Disability Resource Mentors (DRMs) will engage in a training modeled after the initial four-day training delivered in the Changing the Culture grant. This initial cohort will consist of identified campus partners looking to update their information and better inform their practice. Using feedback and information gathered from this cohort, we will again refine and adjust the curriculum to ensure that it is meeting our goal of increasing understanding of invisible disabilities and knowledge of resources within our campus community.
Once we have a population of students trained as DRMs, we will establish drop-in hours for students in need to educate them about available resources both within the Dean of Students Office as well as in other locations on campus. The DRMs will be an integral part of the support network for students with invisible disabilities at URI.
The DRM cohorts will serve as another layer within our campus community to expand the network of support deeper into academic departments, as well as other areas of campus life (Housing and Residential Life, Greek Life, Academic Enhancement Center, Advising, Community Standards, etc.)