1.5 Bridge to Career (Glass)
| TX-Center on Disability and Development, UCEDD | |||
| Program Type | UCEDD | Fiscal Year | 2020 |
| Contact | Tracy Glass | ||
| [email protected] | |||
| Phone | 979-854-4461 | ||
| Project Description | |||
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Bridge to Career Postsecondary education has long been considered a pathway to community inclusion, independent living, and competitive employment for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and developmental disabilities (DD), just as it has been for people without ID/DD. The need for specialized knowledge and skills gained through college, university, or technical school training has increased for all students. Postsecondary education options available for students with ID/DD are increasing as a result of the rising numbers of students with disabilities attending college. However, the programs for individuals with ID/DD are often segregated and/or are college experience only programs without an option to gain a degree or certificate respected by the employment sector. Thanks to new federal legislation and a major grant initiative postsecondary education for people with ID/DD is fortunately on the cusp of substantial growth that will make higher education more available, inclusive, and supportive (see Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008: Weir, et al., 2011: Office of Postsecondary Education, 2010). However, with limited models of successful and respected inclusive postsecondary programs for people with ID/DD more knowledge is needed. Inclusive postsecondary education programs providing students with ID/DD formalized accredited college, or university training completion enhance the students? chances to gain successful, competitive employment. As the United States economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, attaining a postsecondary education becomes more critical (Carnevale & Desrochers, 2003). Students with and without disabilities need to exit college with industry respected documentation of skill attainment, a diploma or a certificate, that enhances the students? ability to demonstrate specialized competence and thereby be competitive in the workforce. Bridge to Career in Human Services? (B2C) purpose is to provide people with ID/DD needed support to successfully complete postsecondary education programs, and to create a model other entities may use to support people with ID/DDs? successful completion of postsecondary education programs at colleges or universities. Currently B2C will support 10 people to complete CDD?s PATHS program. The Center on Disability and Development (CDD) will offer the B2C at Texas A&M University (TAMU) beginning the summer of 2012, with the grant and program development beginning January 2012. This program will provide the participants comprehensive assessments to determine needed support, provide pre-program training, and create a wrap-around support team to follow/support the person through to completion of his or her postsecondary education program. The goal of B2C is to assist people with ID/DD with needed support and skills to complete a postsecondary education program and for the program staff to develop a model other entities may use to support people with ID/DD?s successful completion of postsecondary education programs at colleges or universities. Faculty and staff from CDD aim to support 10 individuals with ID/DD per school year to successfully complete a postsecondary education program. B2C proposes to provide participants with a comprehensive needs assessment, a wrap-around support team, and pre-program summer training in the areas of the individual?s identified need to include self-determination, community living skills, and postsecondary education study and organization skills. Broad supports will be put into place from local, state and community resources, employers, and organizations to provide the training and the support the participants need to successfully complete a postsecondary education program. FY 2020 BRIDGE TO CAREER SUMMER COURSES: Person-Centered Practices: Students will identify various Person-Centered Thinking tools for use in their practicum placements and in the workplace. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Technology: Students learn how to login to current course platform to access and submit assignments, word and presentation software, and will receive instruction on using necessary assistive technology. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Self-Determination: This course follows closely with the Possible Selves to improve self-determination for postsecondary students. By the end of the course, students will be able to enhance the ability to lead a self-determined life, enhance disabilities awareness by investigating the perceptions of disabilities, now their own strengths and weaknesses, and will make a plan to achieve the goals based on their own strengths. Students will also be able to learn the diverse challenges when achieving the goals and use effective strategies to overcome such challenges in attaining goals. They will learn to self-monitor their own progress toward goals, reflect on that progress, and reward themselves for achieving their goals. Students will know how to develop the communication and negotiation skills and effectively discuss accommodation needs with both instructors and supervisors/coworkers. Students will learn how to generalize self-determination skills to other settings, such as goal setting, planning to achieve, self-monitoring and self-reinforcement and identify areas for self-improvement, pursue necessary educational/training resources, and share knowledge with others. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Skills to Pay the Bills: Soft Skills to Pay the Bills is a curriculum developed by the Office of Disability Employment Policy at U.S. Department of Labor to help teach important soft skills or workforce readiness skills. By the end of this course, students will be able to understand what a soft skill is and identify soft skills needed for workplace success. They will be able to understand the importance of being specific when offering and receiving communication, understand the importance of having a positive mental attitude, and maintain the belief that they can transform or change a tough situation into something better. They will understand the importance of teamwork and what they bring to the group as well as what they might need from others. Students will also be able to identify strengths and needs regarding teamwork and understand the importance of networking in the career development process as well as understand social media and email etiquette. They will learn workplace ethics and determine the differences between criticism, praise, and feedback. Students will understand situations by using different perceptions and try to make a right decision based on the deep consideration. Students will understand professional work attitude and improve morale as well as understand different cultures from generational and ethnic diversity. They will be able to explain the positive personality traits and how to present those traits to an employer in an interview setting. They will also learn the skill of self-reflection and identify areas for self-improvement, pursue necessary educational/training resources, and share knowledge with others. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Professionalism: Prerequisite class in preparation for the PATHS Fall Professionalism class. Covers introduction to professionalism and gives a broad overview of topics covered in detail during the PATHS Fall semester. Students will learn to coordinate with classmates to complete tasks and assignments and to provide appropriate and professional feedback to classmates and accept feedback from classmates, mentors, and instructors. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Budgeting: Students will demonstrate improvement with regard to money management skills including identifying needs versus wants, creating a simple budget, and tracking expenses. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Healthy Relationships: Students will be able to increase knowledge and skills for the development of healthy relationships, promote healthy sexuality for individuals, improve healthy development, health, safety, and well-being, and understand boundaries. Students will also be able to identify characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships, address increasing perceptions of risk and harmfulness of engaging in specific health risk behaviors, build personal and social competence, and provide functional knowledge that is basic, accurate and directly contributes to health promoting behaviors and decisions. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Cooking: Students will learn basic skills with regard to cooking including basic nutrition, choosing healthy foods, and proper operation of a stove, oven, and microwave. Students will learn how to cook basic meals. Measurement lessons are included as well as proper hygiene, safety, and proper cleaning tips before, during, and after cooking meals. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Exercise: This class is designed to present a basic overview of health and fitness with a focus on basic exercise. Students will study the importance of self-care with regard to participation in regular exercise. Students will study the importance of exercise in daily living and will learn appropriate warm up, proper exercise techniques, and the importance of stretching and cool down post-routine. Students will be able to develop a basic exercise routine specific to their fitness goals and demonstrate exercise concepts and techniques. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Community Day: This course was developed to help students develop techniques for navigating unknown areas in their community through specific modeling-based instruction on campus and community bus systems through identification of landmarks and the use of technology and apps designed to guide students to their desired destinations. By the end of the course, students will be able to independently navigate campus and their local community utilizing technology and physical landmarks and will be able to generalize those skills to new environments. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program Volunteer Day: Students will attend and describe assigned volunteer opportunities. Students will begin the development of and practice acceptable work ethic and professionalism at volunteer sites. Supervision and feedback are provided during volunteer opportunities. Students will be able to accept and use feedback in each new placement and will be able to generalize all skills learned to each new volunteer and employment site. Prerequisite: Admission into the Bridge to Career Program |
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