Global Program Opens A World to Students with Developmental Disabilities

Story by Karen Augé and Sara Knuth

Kristina Sisneros loves “everything” about her philosophy class, and the Student Center, where she meets her friends. “We hang out, have lunch. We have a good time.”

Jen Anderman’s favorite things about Regis are her dorm room, and her English class, because “I love writing.”

Sophia Whitten puts out flags, pumps up balls and does other tasks to help out the women’s soccer team.

And like college students everywhere, the young women have devised clever ways of dodging parents’ questions about homework and deadlines.

Sisneros, Anderman and Whitten are like college students everywhere, with one exception: They are pioneers.

The three are members of the first class in Regis’ GLOBAL Inclusive College Certificate Program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And they are finding their place on Regis’ northwest Denver campus and within the Regis community.

Launched this fall, the GLOBAL program provides a collegiate experience for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The program’s goal is to prepare those students for employment and independent living — and thriving in adulthood.

Enrolled students complete 12- to 30 credit hours using a combination of modifications and accommodations. Peer mentors help with practical things like navigating around campus and also share the social knowledge so crucial to a student’s success on campus — like where to have lunch, and how to find extra-curricular activities. Just being a familiar face, and a friend. The Regis mentors have been tremendous this semester, said Jeanine Coleman, Ph.D., GLOBAL program director.

When they complete the program, students will receive a Credential of Completion at the University’s annual commencement ceremonies.

Regis is the nation’s only Jesuit institution to offer higher education to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the only private university in the state to do so. In Colorado, three public institutions — Arapahoe Community College, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the University of Northern Colorado — offer inclusive higher education.

Mainstreaming children with intellectual and developmental disabilities in classes has long been a norm in elementary and high schools. But a decade ago, even five years ago, offering them higher education opportunities was all but unthinkable.

Except to Regis Provost Karen Riley, Ph.D. Riley has devoted much of her career and her scholarship to researching and improving the lives of children and families affected by Fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome. For years, she believed providing college opportunities for young adults with those conditions was not only think-able, but do-able — and highly beneficial to everyone that is involved.

When Riley began her career, “infants and preschoolers were the most underserved,” in the intellectual disability community, often because their conditions weren’t diagnosed early enough. Since then, services for the very young “have increased dramatically. And that’s a good thing. Now, the most underserved are students in late adolescence or early adulthood,” she said.

Despite decades of integrating children with intellectual and developmental disabilities into elementary and high school classrooms and school activities, “Post-secondary options are almost unheard of,” Riley said.

“The lack of learning and social opportunities for young adults, particularly those with Down or Fragile X, is potentially damaging,” Riley said, because they are predisposed to developing agoraphobia. Without opportunities after high school, their social circles tend to shrink and isolation can set in.

The GLOBAL program is initially financed through a more than $600,000 grant from the Anna and John J. Sie Foundation and the Global Down Syndrome Foundation. The goal is to have a program that is self-sustaining after three years, and attracts 20 or so students each year, Riley said.

With the success of the first semester, program leaders are working to gain certification that would make it eligible to offer federal student aid, including Pell grants and work study opportunities, Coleman said.

What’s more, Coleman and Riley said they hope the program’s success — five students, four women and one man, are enrolled in the inaugural class — will inspire other Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) institutions to consider providing similar opportunities for intellectually and developmentally disabled students.

Riley acknowledged that it is unlikely that any GLOBAL students will go on to become engineers or Fortune 500 CEOs. But that isn’t the point, she said. “We’re not about disseminating knowledge anymore. Our job is human development.”

And the GLOBAL experience is about more than academics, she said. It is also about socializing, independent living and gaining life skills and experience. And just overall feelings of belonging and well-being. One of the students, Coleman said, is 35. All her siblings went to college, and now she’s finally getting her chance.

The program also is about helping students like Sisneros, Anderman and Whitten realize their full potential, and showing the rest of the world how broad that potential is.

The GLOBAL program also happens to be very much a perfect reflection of the Regis mission, Riley and Coleman said. “This is a missionspecific space,” she said. “This is God’s work.”

It has also provided Kristina Sisneros a chance to pass on some advice to future students that’s based on her own experience. “Believe in yourself,” she said.