SUCCESS Serves Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Marking the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), yesterday Gov. Martin O’Malley announced the launch of SUCCESS, a four-year post-secondary education program for students with intellectual disabilities. The Maryland Department of Disabilities and UMBC partnered to develop the program (press release).

An AP report on the announcement, which appeared in The Washington Post and on WBFF FOX45, noted that although students will not receive college credit, they will take a seminar with degree-seeking students, lead a service learning project, and intern at departments on UMBC’s campus.

The Baltimore Sun added that SUCCESS will begin with 6-8 students this fall and will be housed in UMBC’s Shriver Center, named for Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver and Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

SUCCESS Program Accepting Applications for Fall Semester

Applications are now available for the SUCCESS program, Maryland’s first four-year post-secondary education program for students with intellectual disabilities. A partnership between UMBC and the Maryland Department of Disabilities (MDOD), the SUCCESS program will enable Marylanders with intellectual disabilities to develop their independence, critical thinking, problem-solving and employment skills in a university setting. The four-year college experience will also give them the opportunity to interact with their peers through a wide array of inclusive, educational, social and recreational campus-based activities.

The program will be housed in the Shriver Center at UMBC. Named for Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics, the Shriver Center at UMBC promotes the integration of civic engagement, teaching, learning, and discovery on campus, regionally, and nationally. The SUCCESS program is a natural outgrowth of the Shriver and Kennedy family values.

Applications are available from the UMBC Shriver Center at http://shrivercenter.umbc.edu and must be submitted no later than July 10, 2012. SUCCESS candidates may be interviewed by a selection committee. Candidate selection is not based on the student’s disability, but rather on the student’s level of motivation to attend college and his/her ability to serve as an Ambassador of “SUCCESS.”

More information can be found here.

UMBC Shriver Center on WYPR

UMBC’s Shriver Center has partnered with College Gardens for 15 years to offer children in Southwest Baltimore tutoring, mentorship and supervised activities after school. This week, WYPR highlighted the hard work of UMBC student volunteers in a news feature on the program, which parents say “provides a safe, academic haven for their children.”

Service-learning intern Brittany Rush ’12, GES, has worked with College Gardens for two years. She tells WYPR’s Gwendolyn Glenn that she came into the program aware of negative stereotypes of Baltimore city youth, but she quickly found that “these kids all do care about their futures and the future of their peers.”

A current University of Baltimore student who participated in the program as a child reflects that it was UMBC student mentors who inspired her to see college as a a real possibility for her life: “I was excited for it because I saw the UMBC kids and I was like, ‘I can’t wait to go to college. I can’t wait until I’m old enough.’”

Christine Routzahn, Shriver Center, in Diversity/Careers

Christine Routzahn, Shriver Center Director of Professional Practice, comments on the increasing value and popularity of internship opportunities in this month’s new issue of Diversity/Careers in Engineering & Information Technology (click and scroll to page 46).

“Students need to distinguish themselves from others to ensure that they can compete in a tight job market,” Routzahn says. She also suggests internships are valuable not only for students, but also for companies, who appreciate hiring from a pool of talented job candidates whom they’ve already worked with and trained.