Students with Disabilities

As an Academic advisor, you will interact with many students who have disabilities. These may include attention deficit disorder, chronic medical conditions, hearing impairments, learning disabilities, mobility impairments, physical impairments, psychiatric disabilities, substance abuse disorder, or vision impairments. Increasingly, students arriving at Mount Holyoke College identify with a number of these disabilities. Some students will identify early on in your advisory relationship while others may never share this information with you.

If they share this information with you, it may be helpful if you encourage them to talk openly about their experiences involving their disability if they feel comfortable. Initiate conversations about their strengths, challenges, interests, and goals. The Information for Academic Advising Form can give you a good place to start. Ask the student, “What are you good at? What gets in your way?” Keep a positive perspective on the disability. Try not to assume that they need assistance around their disability; ask them what they think they may need from you, from the academic setting, from the College.

Mount Holyoke offers services on an individual basis to students with disabilities. You can encourage them to meet with the appropriate support person to explore more fully how the College could support them in their goals. You can refer students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder to the Office of Learning Skills, while all other students with disabilities can contact the Associate Dean of Students/Disabilities.

The support person will work with the student to register under the Americans with Disabilities Act and thus be eligible to receive support and reasonable accommodations. It is the student’s responsibility to seek out support and academic accommodations but encouragement from you may move them towards connecting with our support services.

The College's guiding philosophy regarding the provision of accommodations is that they serve as a bridge which enables a student to fully engage in the college experience. These accommodations should be empowering, and the overriding goal is to create an opportunity for greater independence, responsibility, and self-sufficiency. Many times, the academic advisor and the support person act as a team in assisting the student.
Suggestions for Advising Students with Disabilities
Balance Course Work so that challenges won’t be overwhelming (i.e. if reading is a major problem, advise the student away from more than one or two heavy reading courses.)

Identify Learning Strengths and help students match them to faculty with teaching styles consistent with those strengths.

Be Alert to Self-Selection away from specific course work like foreign languages or math because of past failures. This may be indicative of problems down the road in meeting the degree requirements. Encourage the student to connect with the appropriate disability support professional to help plan distribution requirements or explore academic accommodation options.

Check the Organization of her notebooks and explore issues around time management. Time and how the student uses it may be an important factor in her success here. She may need more directive assistance in setting up goals and establishing a program of time management.

Stay in Contact with her. Sometimes 15 minutes every two or three weeks will help you monitor her progress and help her feel welcome. Set up the next meeting time before she leaves from the current meeting with you. Establishing how to keep in touch will be very important to her. Even brief check-ins can help solidify your relationship with her and catch problems before they turn into crises.

Keep in Mind Critical Drop Periods because some students might need to take a 12-credit semester course load.

Check to see if she has made contact with the appropriate support person and encourage her to use that office for support. More information on Disability Services or Office of Learning Skills...