Penn State’s Faculty Senate is recommending several changes to how the university’s Student Disability Resources are administered, with a goal of streamlining the process and making sure the needed resources are available.
“The number of students that are seeking student disability resources has been dramatically climbing," said Paul Frisch, chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Educational Equity and Campus Environment.
Frisch, speaking during a Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday, pointed to data at Penn State in recent years. About 10% of students across the university contact Student Disability Resources about accommodations, and 6% are found to be eligible. Accommodations could mean more time to take a test or closed-captioning for course material.
Faculty are required to make "reasonable accommodations" for students with disabilities under federal law.
Faculty Senator Martha Strickland raised the issue of campuses not being physically accessible for people with disabilities.
“At present, we still at Penn State Harrisburg have doors that stop working literally every week that are the only entrance places for some of our buildings," Strickland said. She said there is also a lack of restrooms with a button that can open the door from the outside, making someone who needs assistance wait for someone else to open the door.
“We find this on a lot of campuses where physical accessibility is very limited at best," Strickland said.
Leah Zimmerman, executive director of Student Disability Resources, said the university's access committee could look into doing audits of the campuses' buildings.
Zimmerman said other changes are already underway, including plans to launch a faculty portal that lets faculty see how many students with registered disabilities will be in a class that semester and what types of accommodations they might need.
"I think we are open to exploring different ways of doing accommodation. Just because we've been done it the same way for 10-plus years doesn't mean we have to continue doing it that way," she said.
The recommendations the Faculty Senate approved include: centralizing the Student Disability Resources budgets for the campuses to help address concerns about costs and improve the review timeline; having campus provosts send an email to faculty at the beginning of the year “to reinforce best practices for encouraging students with diagnosed or emerging disabilities to connect with campus (Student Disability Resources) offices and share accommodation letters as early in the semester as possible"; and assessing the test-taking places available to students with disabilities and whether they have the needed resources, such as being quiet and having text-to-speech software.
The recommendations will be sent to Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi for consideration.
