One of the things I love about NACE members is their willingness to share their programs, successes, and yes, sometimes even their failures. On a recent meeting with Larry Markle, director of the Gregory S. Fehribach Center at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, and a member of our NACE Affinity Impact Team promoting improving the employment outlook for individuals with disabilities, he shared with me a great program at Purdue University to help students with disabilities adapt to life at Purdue, but to also prepare for employment post-Purdue. I took an opportunity to talk with Ryan McCombs, access consultant and Peer Mentor Program Coordinator in the Disability Resource Center (DRC) at Purdue University and here’s what he shared with me about their program.
Cindy: Ryan, tell me a little bit about your program?
Ryan: The Disability Resource Center’s Peer Mentor Program is intended for disabled students at Purdue University-West Lafayette, and designed to personalize a holistic experience, along with fostering self-awareness and cultivating an engaging and supporting collegiate environment for participants in the program. The Peer Mentor Program strategically matches returning students affiliated with the DRC with incoming first-year students with disabilities in a mentor/mentee relationship. Mentors provide support, resources, and advice to their mentees based on their own personal experiences of navigating Purdue with a disability. The Peer Mentor Program hosts monthly mentor/mentee bonding events, student development workshops, and leadership opportunities, and fosters personal relationships with peers. Along with individual meetings between mentors and mentees throughout the month, the first year of the program we focused on mentor and leadership development. By the end of the first year, we created a position, senior mentor, designed to help assist with this component of the program. The senior mentor is a previous mentor in the program who has displayed above-average leadership skills.
During the first year of the Peer Mentor Program in 2018-2019, we had 16 mentors and 24 mentees. During our second year of the Peer Mentor Program, we increased students involvement with 32 mentors, eight senior mentors, and 34 mentees. In all, we have been able to learn from our numbers and growth of the program to assist our professional staff with student development in various ways. We are continuously changing the program to meet the needs of the students.
Cindy: How do you see your work in this area helping students be more prepared for employment post-graduation and/or in their internship?
Ryan: I see this type of work as an opportunity to help provide students with the experiences, skills, and resources needed to excel in not only the educational environment but also in their future career fields. When we talk about employment both as post-graduation or internships, many disabled individuals are not given opportunities that their non-disabled counterparts have. The Peer Mentor Program is designed with the intent to help provide students with opportunities, experiences, and skills that they can use in their future careers. Along with the many different types of professional skills students are intended to develop in the post-secondary environment, our mentors and senior mentors are provided with opportunities that go above the traditional leadership skills. Mentoring provides these students opportunities to learn how to be a voice in their community and to accept their peers for who they are. It also helps students with problem-solving as well as understanding and communicating with different types of people. It has taken students out of their comfort zones and given them opportunities to learn perseverance. Mentees are gaining communication and social skills that will help them build relationships with peers and employers in the future.
Cindy: Self-advocacy is an important part of the job-search process for students with disabilities, how have your mentors been able to help students in this area?
Ryan: Mentors in the program have been able to use the Center for Career Opportunities here at Purdue as a resource when mentor/mentee discussions revolve around internships and career opportunities and access. Mentors have also been key participants in campus-wide disability programming around our Education to Employment series partnered with the Center for Career Opportunities. Employment for disabled individuals is a hot topic for our population of students. It has been extremely powerful to hear student experiences and concerns coming from our mentors when they are given an opportunity to have a voice in these spaces.
Mentors share their own experiences being self-advocates in discussions with faculty and in other spaces within our campus community. We have many students with a variety of conditions. Even though not every student is going to have the exact same experience, it can be very beneficial and helpful for these students to share the different types of obstacles in which they have had to advocate for themselves.
Cindy: How have your peer mentors been able to change the dynamics of how your office works with students with disabilities?
Ryan: In disability services, much of our work with students can be very transactional. Most of our conversations are regarding accommodations and access issues. Although we do make an attempt to get to know the student as a whole person, with very large rosters this can be challenging. The Peer Mentor Program allows the professional staff to interact with students in a different and often less formal way. We have a group event of some kind once a month. This may be a game night, movie night, field trip, or some other event to allow for community building. In this way, the staff has an opportunity to get to know the students. The conversations are less formal and do not necessarily revolve around access or accommodations. As a result, our rapport with students has improved overall.
In addition to greater rapport, we also have a group of students whom we can rely on to share their thoughts with any changes the office may make. These students have also been particularly willing to participate in campus-wide programming around disability and share their experiences with other stakeholders throughout the campus community.