Lending
a helping hand
By Luis Peña
On-line Forty-Niner
Disabled
Student Services is celebrating 30 years
of helping students with learning and physical
disabilities at Cal State Long Beach.
“This year we are celebrating our 30th anniversary
of our program that was started by students
in 1973 to help level the playing field
for students that have disabilities,” said
David Sanfilippo, director of Disabled Student
Services.
DSS started out helping physically disabled
students to make sure they had such things
as parking, ramps and physical access to
facilities at CSULB. DSS has grown to helping
students with learning disabilities, Sanfilippo
said.
“We work on pretty much anything that would
come into play where a disability may have
an effect on the learning process.
“I even had a student at one time that had
an allergy,” Sanfilippo said. “When you
say that’s probably not a disability but
this person was allergic to metal and if
she had contact with her skin with metal
for longer than 10 seconds she could go
into anaphylactic shock. So we had to go
and find wood desks and wood chairs that
didn’t have metal that she would come into
contact with.”
To be eligible for services at DSS a student
needs to verify the disability with his
or her doctor, educational therapist or
psychologist that it affects one or more
life functions, according to Sanfilippo.
DSS has a signed contract that a student
takes to an instructor whenever they need
an in class accommodation so that the instructor
knows that the student has a verified disability,
Sanfilippo said.
Students that suspect that they may have
a disability can be tested at DSS.
“We do have a lot of people who have gone
undiagnosed up until they come to college,”
Sanfilippo said. “Usually they acknowledge
that something is holding them back that
they are unable to do as well as they should
be.”
DSS consists of four program components.
The DSS component provides support services.
The Steven Benson Program deals with learning
disabilities. The Workability Program, which
works with the Career Development Center
at CSULB, provides employment prospects.
The Assistive Technology Program, which
is called the High Tech Center, helps students
with computer related issues, Braille and
other visually related issues.
“The Steven Benson Program is for students
with learning disabilities and we offer
accommodations along with counseling services,”
said Stacy Garza, office manager for the
Steven Benson Program.
“For the most part what students use the
most are note taking services, exam taking
services, where they have extended time
in a quite room, academic advising, disability
management, counseling, tutoring and general
referrals depending on what the nature of
their disability is,” Peter Perbix, the
support services coordinator at DSS, said.
CSULB has 1,300 disabled students and the
majority of them are learning disabled students,
according to Perbix.
“The one thing that we do is extended time
on exams,” Perbix said. “We would put them
in a quite room by themselves and give them
time and a half, for example, if everybody
else in the class got an hour they would
get an hour and a half on the exam.”
They also provide readers that read exams,
and writers that write for the student on
exams, according to Perbix.
The note taking services give carbon paper
to another student in the class who is taking
notes and at the end of class, they give
a copy to the disabled student, according
to Perbix.
Note takers for LD students are helpful
because they may not be able to keep up
with what the professor is saying because
of processing problems that unable them
to write down notes, Kathryn Holmes, the
Steven Benson Program coordinator said.
DSS provide books on tape which are primarily
for learning disabled students and visually
impaired students that do not read Braille,
according to Perbix.
They also refer students to the tutoring
center, the High Tech Center, Perbix said.
“We cannot offer personal caring,” Perbix
said. “If anybody needs help eating or going
to the bathroom, dressing, transferring
someone from a wheelchair to a car we are
not suppose to do that.”
The counseling component is to help LD students
adjust to the university level because LD
students often have difficulties with processing
new ways of doing things. Emotional and
social components also come up that a student
might find difficulties with their academic
experience, Holmes said.
Students can work with counselors on disability
awareness, social and adjustment issues
to CSULB. Garza said.
The Steven Benson Program does offer testing
to students who suspect that they may have
a learning disability but there is currently
a waiting list to be tested, Garza said.
“A learning disability is a processing deficit
in one or more areas within a person with
average or higher than average IQ,” Holmes
said.
Extended time and alternative locations
are common accommodations for LD students
because they help to make up for the processing
deficits that they may have and to keep
students away from distractions because
most LD students are easily distracted,
Holmes said.
If a student has a disability, or thinks
that they may have one, Holmes advises that
they visit DSS to obtain services because
they are there to help.
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