MSCHE Pillars of Change
MSCHE Pillars of Change
Episode 9 - East Stroudsburg University Career and Independent Living and Learning Studies (CILLS)
In this episode of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) Pillars of Change Podcast, Dr. Valerie D. Lehr, Commissioner and Professor of Gender Studies/Government, St. Lawrence University (NY), engages with leaders from the East Stroudsburg University (PA) Career and Independent Living and Learning Studies (CILLS) program.
Dean of the College of Education, Dr. Brooke Langan; CILLS Program Director, Dr. Domenico Cavaiuolo; and CILLS Program Coordinator, Dylan Doran; share with our audience how the CILLS program provides a high-quality learning experience and necessary support within a university setting to help young adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities develop life skills. The program prepares individuals to live independently and lead productive lives in their communities.
00:00:15 Valerie Lehr
Welcome to the Pillars of Change Podcast presented by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. My name is Valerie Lehr, and I serve as a professor of government and gender and sexuality studies at Saint Lawrence University in Canton, NY.
Thank you for joining me for the Commission's continuing series of podcasts, focusing on topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. This podcast series spotlights highly effective institutional practices tied to diversity, equity and inclusion that have made a difference in the lives of our students. Today we're talking to the team from East Stroudsburg University or ESU Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation about the career and independent living and learning studies or CILLS program.
Our guests today include Dean of the College of Education, Brooke Langton CILLS program, director Domenico Cavaiuolo Cavalo and CILLS program coordinator Dylan Doran.
The CILLS program provides a high quality learning experience and necessary support within a university setting to help young adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities develop life skills that prepare them to live independently and lead productive lives in their.
Community’s participants engage in realistic and inclusive learning experiences that build self-confidence while working towards achieving their goals. To work and live in an inclusive community. The program is designed to blend personal growth with the development of essential skills for independent living and future employment.
00:01:52 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Well, thanks for having us. The program actually got concept lies around 2008 and it's quite interesting how that happened. There were some parents who who notified me or contacted me about the an idea of the post secondary education program for individuals with intellectual disabilities, particularly individuals with Down syndrome.
And these three parents who contacted me, they had children with Down syndrome. They had been exploring options or had been exploring programs that existed around the country. One in particular was the Taft College program out in California that had a lot of great success. So because of that and because they were, you know, having, you know, these discussions with their children, they in particular their children would say, well, my brother or my sister's going to college and and the child with disability would say well, “When am I going to college?” And the parents did not have a real good answer. So anyways, make a Long story short, they they contacted me around 2008, and it took us a couple of years before we were able to kind of lay out the plan, the idea to flesh out what the program would look like, what we would do and of course, we would have to present this to the President, to our College of Education. Certainly it began with a discussion with my department and in our department staff, their faculty, and we went through a whole series of meetings with various people, departments, and college administration to get us to the point where they gave us kind of the green light to move ahead and move board, and then around 2010, two years later, after all of this planning and all of that, in 2010, we began our first cohort of students and and we typically we call our students who come in cohorts and we started with six, six individuals who entered the program.
And we were pretty lucky that one of the family members was was able to provide us with an initial fund or foundation, if you will, or grant if you will. It wasn't wasn't a grant, it was a just a donation to kind of get us started because we as a as a program needed to be self-sustaining, independent in terms of we did not expect the university to you know and provide any financial support for it, although the university provides all kinds of support in in the way of offices and space and in kind support with myself included as part of the, you know as the director, all of those things, but they provided us with a a good starting point and from there.
We were able to create an initial group and every year thereafter we would accept new students.
In every every year. So every year we would have a cohort of 6 to 8 individuals that would enter the program after a series of interviews and applications and things like that. So it it was really, you know, realized that way and and the president at the time was Doctor Robert Dillman, who was very supportive and extremely helpful in helping us get it started. And then we've and a couple of you know, administrative changes, but along the way we've had continued support for the program.
00:05:41 Valerie Lehr
Actually, could could I also embed a question as as you talk about the kind of support that you received which is at the time that you were creating the program, you must have been making arguments to the President, to the board, to other administrators about how this program would fit into the larger university mission and goals.
So can you talk and Doctor Langan, perhaps you're the you're a good person to do this, to talk about how you see the program fitting into the university's larger goals.
00:06:15 Brooke Langan
You got it. Yeah. I can jump in here. So here at ESU we really, we are the home of the Warriors. And our tagline is that we are. This is where warriors belong. And I don't think there's any better way to really illustrate this than through our CILLS program. We our goal is to not have our students fit in but to create spaces where our students can belong. They're not changing who they are to fit into who we are, but we are creating an environment where where they can come as their whole true selves, and I think the CILLS program has provided not only that to this those students to be able to come to ESU and really integrate into the fabric of the university, whether it be the academic courses where they are auditing coursework to become part of the the social fabric they're there. You'll go to the rec center and and they're all working out. They're all playing basketball. They're having a good time. Also our clubs and activities, they are all engaged. So it allows, I think, not only the CILLS students to reflect what our university really appreciates and that's the individual uniqueness that everyone brings to our campus, but the CILLS program makes our student body our faculty, our staff, and our administration.
I think it it makes us whole. It makes us understand how our students differ at all different levels, whether it comes from their, their intellectual disabilities. Race, religion, sexual orientation. Those are things that I think this program has allowed us as university administrators to understand the importance that making sure we say yes to programs like this, that we understand how important they are and how they really can chat engage the community in which everyone is learning so it fit right in to what we were doing. I was not here at the time. I am a warrior, so I got to return in 2016 and be blessed to see the this type of work and first hand to see these students on campus.
I open up, I know I probably should save this to the end, but I welcome anyone to really come and see what this is like for these students, our ESU students, and they're rock stars. Everyone on campus knows our still students. Everyone is engaged with our still students. So it really it, it speaks to the the depth of intention and preparation and organization that these gentlemen have put into our program. So I applaud them.
00:09:14 Domenico Cavaiuolo
If I could just add, you know the argument was made about inclusion and diversity. Quite simply, you know, if we want to continue to express that notion or that, you know, idea of diversity and inclusion, we have to expand the concept of diversity to include people with disabilities. And that includes those with intellectual disabilities, not just. People with physical disabilities or emotional disabilities or disorders, that is. But people with intellectual disabilities. And you know, I I mean just quite frankly, I've been involved in this field for 45 years. And I began my career working with individuals to get them out as institutions and into into group homes and into community living arrangements. And, you know, for me to see the progression of that work, from institutionalization to going to a university. I mean it's just phenomenal. I mean, I'm just. It's just amazing to me to see that transformation of a of a field of study, you know, going from, you know, the idea that people couldn't do things to the possibilities are endless and and diversity includes people with disabilities quite clearly.
00:10:34 Valerie Lehr
That's great. Thank you. I'm, I'm wondering you've told us a little bit about who the students are in the program, but I'm wondering if you could add a little bit to that. And then this might.
Maybe it’s the time of year that it is, but I'm thinking about orientation at the moment because probably we all and I'm just wondering how you bring the students into the campus and introduce them to the campus in ways that begin to create the kinds of relationships that you're talking about.
00:11:03 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Dylan, You're perfect to to answer that one.
00:11:05 Dylan Doran
Yeah. So we do have our orientation coming up this week. So we do bring in, we do our own those small orientation at first because it's a huge transition for these families from there for any family, but especially for them, shipping their kids off to college without their parents for the first time. I think it's a bigger transition for their parents than it is for the students at times. But yeah, we do have a small orientation where we go over everything they need to learn for, you know, the campus, including the different services they offer that where their classes are going to be giving them their schedule. Then next week, when this classes begin, they go through a first year experience course that's taught by myself, and that is where we've really introduced them to the college campus in the world. So they go to the club fairs, they go to the sporting events and just from going to those natural things with their peers at the issue, they start picking up their relationships with their peers. And I really don't have to do much work from there because they're peers that just you really take them under their wing and that's really great with ESU, especially as a whole campus is that we are so inclusive and everyone does know the CILLS program and they get to know it pretty quickly that our students just get really right into it, and they start going to all these events and you know, they get invited to everything. We send it to our student mentors. So we also hire student mentors to help our students along the way. So they are big support with them as well. So right off the bat, they are going to all the things that their peer freshmans are going to as well. And so from there to just pick up from the natural cues of their peers.
00:12:45 Domenico Cavaiuolo
And I and I think that's a huge piece of it as our student mentors, our student mentors, that we have almost 30 of them or so who really connect with our students in the program that really are are more influential in getting our students to school students to be connected with other students and throughout the camp.
00:13:10 Dylan Doran
Yeah, definitely. So that is our student mentor. So we have four different domains. We are our campus, our our program and that is academics, vocational, socialization, and daily living, all for them besides vocational, because that's something we do during the day is where our student mentors pick up and support our students. So they do support them with their homework because, you know, coming to college, they have a whole course out of all these new courses, and they have homework left and right, they support them, especially with daily living. So all of our students live in off campus housing with a house manager that's run by their families, and they are learning those daily living skills such as chores. Their parents are no longer around, so they have to do their own laundries. They have to clean their own dishes. They have to cook themselves or none of that is going to happen. So our student mentors really support them with all of that and make sure that they are becoming the most independent selves that they could become. And then the biggest one is socialization and that's where they're getting them involved on the campus with their peers. And it's we don't really like going as a whole group of a CILLS program saying here we are, every student is individual. So if a student is interested in dance, they're going to join the dance club. If a student is interested in marine science, they're going to join the marine science. So it's really whatever the student is interested in. That is where they go. They never have to go together. It's all based on what they're interested.
00:14:36 Domenico Cavaiuolo
And we use a concept called person centered planning. Sure, you're probably familiar with that concept, but person center planning, I mean I I I said we we use it, but it's not quite as extensive as the full person centered planning concept itself, but we incorporate person centered planning within the framework of what students want to do, what they desire, what their interests are and and what their you know, what their vision for themselves for their life, so we use that concept to really help us identify different avenues for direction and course work for them to go to.
00:15:18 Valerie Lehr
I wonder if you could say a little bit more about who your mentors are. Are there students who you largely draw from the School of Education, and do they come more broadly from the institution and?
When they are no longer mentors, what do they see as as the primary things that they've gained from serving as mentors in this program?
00:15:42 Dylan Doran
Yeah. So we do a lot of them do come from the College of Education. That's where I like to gear my, you know, advertisement with them. But recently it has been branching out. We just hired people from the English Department, biology department, exercise science and that's all from word of mouth from their friends, they, their friends from the College of Ed may have became a mentor. They loved it so much, they said you should do this. It's a great program. It's a great job. It's a great learning experience. So mainly from the College of Ed and the communication sciences and Disorders department as the bulk of our mentors. But we definitely are open and we are branching out to definitely more once they are no longer mentors. I heard tremendous amount of feedback that they thoroughly enjoyed the job. They learned a lot from the job, no matter what job they're going into after college, they are going to be working with diverse populations of different ability levels, different cultures, sexuality, Et cetera. And this program has really taught them of how to work with different populations and be patient and empathy and so many characteristics that we all need to learn and should learn in order to do any of our jobs successfully.
00:16:55 Domenico Cavaiuolo
And the other just add add to that point there we haven't done enough research within the program yet, but we are gathering some data which acts does ask that question what did you gain from your experiences as a mentor? What were the benefits? What did you learn from it? So those are things that we're beginning to explore, beginning to collect data on. Unfortunately, our lives have gotten so busy. And for, you know, throughout these last, you know, 10-12 years we haven't done a lot of that, but we are and in fact, Dylan, myself and a colleague Dr. Caroline DiPipi-Hoy just presented at a conference transition conference on time management as a concept or as a research piece for this. And we're doing that, we're going to be collecting some data starting in the fall on on the concept of how students manage their time within the program. So getting there, we're getting better at doing that, but unfortunately not well enough.
00:18:02 Valerie Lehr
Well, I think it's I was just going to say, I think it's interesting because it seems like for people who are going into the field of education, this could just be a a a tremendously valuable experience for learning things like, you know, differentiated education and really just thinking about how you work with individuals so I mean, you know, I think it would be great to see some of that kind of research just because it seems like there must be so much there, yeah.
00:18:30 Brooke Langan
Yeah, I I do agree. I think this is a a true benefit to our students to have this first hand opportunity to work with these students. One piece of research I would like to see at that administrative level is what impact do our CILLS students have on all students who graduate from East Stroudsburg University because they have such far reaching.
00:18:48 Valerie Lehr
Thank you.
00:18:52 Brooke Langan
Relationships. I know, I know personally how it affects our students that are going to be educators. Because it's first hand knowledge and first hand application of the the theories and the practices they're learning here. But even in the bigger picture, how is it affecting and impacting every graduate from East Stroudsburg University? So Dom and Dylan, I want to question in there somewhere.
00:19:22 Valerie Lehr
Well, you know, one of the other questions that I had as I looked at the program was about the audit courses because that that seems to me one of the places and Dean Langan and you spoke about this a little bit earlier, talking about other places where students from the CILLS program were really interacting across campus. You know, whether the gym or clubs and and places like that. But but the audit course struck me as really interesting. So I was wondering if you could say more about the range of courses that students in the CILLS program have audited the kind of work that they do in those courses and what you know about the impact of having those students present in the courses for the rest of the students in the class. So there's a few.
00:20:10 Brooke Langan
Things that I can speak to and I'll let Dom and and Dylan follow up. But the courses that they're taking, I mean it's a variety. I often pop into courses that are in the college bed. Sometimes I'm going to speak with faculty in other colleges or health and physical education courses all with under the College of Health Sciences, but I'm often in there speaking to education students and to see our students in there and engaged in presentations just like their counterparts, their peers. While their delivery may be a little bit different or the depth of their content might be slightly different, they are still provided with the same requirement, so it's exciting to see the encouragement that they're receiving from their peers, others, as well as the faculty and the expectations. I think that's what I'm most proud of, is to see that they're not treated differently but encouraged to push themselves to, to achieve as much as they can achieve, whatever that level is. So I can speak to a personally that I do see that. But I I will turn that over to to Dylan or Dom to talk about really that variety. That of course is because they they span throughout every college here at ESU.
00:21:37 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Go ahead, Dylan.
00:21:39 Dylan Doran
Yeah. So, I mean our students go way beyond the College of Education within the past two years, we formed tracks for our students. So it's like they're almost coming in. They're choosing a degree in a sense, not being a degree, though. They're choosing a track that they want to take and one could be education, Health Sciences, liberal arts and then two other ones as well that I can't think up top, top, my head but so they choose a track and then with those tracks, they go into their major courses with the tracks and they also choose electives as well. So those electives could be anything that the student is interested in. So we have been in departments such as marine science, dance, some communication sciences disorders, health, education. And that's just to name a few. We have definitely been in 15 plus different departments across our campus, which is really great to see once they're in those classes. We do have an academic coordinator on staff that works very closely with the professor. So the professor is not they don't have to handle everything they want and that's will allow them get nervous is they don't want this extra. They don't want to add more to their plate than is needed by taking on a CILLS student. But we have an academic coordinator who works with that professor and will modify all of the assignments based on their ability level. So, as Doctor Langan said, they're completing everything that all the other students are completing just at their ability level.
00:23:04 Brooke Langan
I think that because I.
00:23:05 Domenico Cavaiuolo
It's like you just added it just to. I'm sorry. Just again when when I mentioned persons that are planning the idea that we were looking at what students vision and goals and life expectations are we try to connect the the academic.
00:23:08 Brooke Langan
No, that's OK.
00:23:21 Domenico Cavaiuolo
For the the audited class as to what their goals are for. So I use this example a lot because it was a perfect example. One of our students who completed the program is is currently a teacher’s aide in the Philadelphia School District, and that was something that she came in with her that she wanted to do so. The logical courses that she took in auditing were child development classes in the elementary ed programs. So she took courses that were relevant to what her future goals were that connected. Now, not everybody has that same direct connection. But we do try to do our best to connect the audited classes to what those out. You know, those outcomes will be for their employment and their life goals are.
00:24:11 Brooke Langan
The faculty that the these courses, that the our still students are auditing, these are volunteers. None of the faculty are told you have to you have to take students, but I think as the program has evolved and emerged over the years, more and more faculty are seeing the benefit of having CILLS students in their classes, and I think it's provided them that sort of a reflective practice approach in their own teaching to be able to see that everybody is learning differently and that we really need to focus on our students and become a a student centered university to make sure that everybody's successful. So it's really nice to see the evolution of the faculty as they take on more and more of these audit classes.
00:25:01 Valerie Lehr
Yeah, that's interesting. So this is clearly a very ambitious program and a really impressive program. What do you see? And I think you've spoken to this a little bit, but what do you see as your greatest successes through this program?
00:25:21 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Leave that to you, Brooke.
00:25:22 Brooke Langan
I think the greatest success is seeing the community at large here at the university and being accepting, being engaged and being eager to include. I honestly, when you step onto campus and everyone is here. It's so easy to see how CILLS fits in perfect and makes all of us better. So I think that's really the the major impact on our university is that it has supported an open mind to all aspects of diversity and and it's embraced. So I'm I'm really proud of the work that these gentlemen and the staff do. But overall I'm thankful for the administration and their support. Because we could do this in isolation in the College of Ed, and it would benefit our students, and it would benefit the sole students. But when we're university who really cherishes diversity, equity and inclusion, knowing that all programs involved are all in, everyone wants to be involved with our CILLS students, and it you can see that every day on campus.
00:26:40 Valerie Lehr
That's great. One of the other components of the program that we haven't really talked about is the CILLS students doing an internship, and I'm wondering if that component of the program has helped the university to build wider connections within the community and and kind of what what the internships look like and and how that does in fact enhance what the university is doing.
00:27:07 Dylan Doran
So I would say the internships, if I'm being 100% honest, especially in the community, could be a little more trickier because we're no longer in the ESU bubble. So you know when we're going out and asking these companies, do you want an intern and they are all unpaid at the moment. A lot of companies are very hesitant at first because they don't understand what that may look like, so it takes a lot of meetings, a lot of educational meetings of what our program is and what it would look like as an internship.
So it is more of a challenging aspect when we're branching out into the community and I will say though, 85% of our internships are in the Community because that's something we fought for and that I know the staff and I really believe in that they should be in the Community because they're not going to be on a college campus forever when they leave here, they're going to be working in the community.
So that's what we want to give them something where that's going to be an easy transition.
Mentioning now, most companies do say yes with an open open arms, and so we go in there. So the internships they work six hours a week. Again, we go back to that person center planning. It's based on what they are interested in doing. We don't just plop them in an internship just because it's an internship. So if someone wants to do an internship that is not on our list, then we find that for them. So just recently this upcoming semester I'll just give a quick example. We have a student interested in graphic design marketing. Never had that before, so the first thing I did, and this is where ESU campus includes at large comes in place because I reached out to our marketing advertisement department right here on campus. They do a lot of graphic design. Our social media, and so our one of our students will actually be with that department this upcoming semester, helping out with the social media and making different flyers following around shadowing that department. And that's something that he wants to do with his life. So he's building his resume and he's he's preparing him for the real world once he leaves college, so that's exciting. But all of our internships, as I said, are based off what they're interested in. And we work hand in hand with the companies on what they need in their company in order to make our students successful.
00:29:26 Valerie Lehr
Yeah, that's very interesting. And I can see how that would be a challenge, but I would also guess that once a company has worked with you they're pretty. Are they pretty eager to continue working with you if you have other students who are interested in what they do?
00:29:43 Dylan Doran
Yes, absolutely. And I, you know, all of our students are hard working and dedicated. They show up, they're very punctual. They show up on time. Once they're there, they're working. The best that to their abilities. So they're all extremely hard workers. And that's why the companies want. So yeah, we don't really have hesitation once we have a student in there.
00:30:02 Valerie Lehr
Yeah, that's great.
So as you think about moving forward, I guess I have two questions. What are the greatest challenges that you see in terms of the institution supporting the program? What also?
What have you learned that will help you to think about changes that you might want to make in the future?
00:30:24 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Well, I I guess I can start there. And I I'm, I'm sure Doctor Langan will add. I think the some of the biggest challenges we've had is having to re-educate people you know on on the program itself, you know we we've had a little bit of administrative turnover in the past and and that it was something that we had to you know go back to, OK, this is what the program is all about, this is what we're trying to do and it took some time for our previous administration to kind of get to the point where they were, you know, allowing some some flexibility and certainly some forward thinking now it it didn't take a long time for that to happen, but it it you know again there was a little bit of a challenge when we had that change and you know we we have a a a new president now who has been very supportive and has been very aware of the program. So we haven't had to really do much of that re-education with with that, that administration, of course Dr. Lang has been around this for a while and she's known a program, so she's really been a an asset to supporting and advocating for the things that we do and want to continue to do. I think the the you know, so those kind of those are minor things can be a little bit of a challenge, but I think our future what you know personally and and Dylan and I have had some discussion on this and that is you know how big do we want to grow you know what's the the size of our program. We've always stayed to stayed at a pretty steady number of around 24 individuals. We look to accept 6 to 8 individuals per year. It's a three-year program. So it's either going to be 18 to 24 individuals that we have at any one time. Rationale behind all of that is that we're small where we can provide much greater individualized attention. We don't have a lot of students that we have to worry about, you know, and and and I think one of the things that I really admire about our program and kind of goes back to my background initially as a as a special educator and that is that I started my career working with individuals with severe and significant disabilities. And one of the things that I admire about our program and and the staff is, is that when we see an individual coming to us, we're not looking at the so-called high quality academic student. We're looking at individuals who desire to be there, who we feel have the potential to really learn and develop and learn independent living skills because I know we've had some students that we've had in the program that would probably not, you know, typically get accepted in many other programs, but we accepted them because of the the you know, they desire to be there and we knew that they were going to develop well and and grow and and and and be good citizens afterwards. And and they shown that to be true. So again, those are things that I I admire about our program is that we're we're always willing to accept the challenge within our students and accept students that may not typically be accepted in other places because we're very familiar with a lot of programs that deny access to our students. And also you know we've talked about this doctor Langan, as you know what, what more can we do with perhaps on campus housing or, you know, graduation, you know, kinds of ideas and things like that. So, you know, we're we're still, you know, working on that and and finally, we're in the process and I think you will all receive because you're part of Middle States, I believe is is that we are trying to become a certified a comprehensive transition program, a CTP, which requires, which is a federally funded or, excuse me, a federally recognized certificate certification that allows programs like ours, ours, who are CTP certified by the Federal Department of Ed, that students then can access funding streams like FAFSA, for example. Then it opens the doors for other things within the universal campus, so we're we have the application completed, we're in the process of moving that along and that's one of the goals that we have to you know, move this program forward as that is to get that, get that CTP certification completed and done and and hand it in and and and moving in that direction. So those are some of the challenges but also some of the our future expectations and goals and things that we're really you know you know trying to figure out what we want to do next.
00:35:21 Valerie Lehr
So one of the words that you used in there is interesting because I started with orientation and even before you said the word graduation, I was wondering like what the exit experience looks like for your students. I mean, are do they participate in graduation? Like, what what happens at the end of the program?
00:35:40 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Well, I'll, I'll tell you what. What does happen and then I'll let Doctor Langan add to this. We have just a we have an incredible celebration. I mean, you know, our celebration for our students we you know, we typically we have a a separate you know celebration and graduation, where our President attends our Provost, attends our Dean, attends our department chair. I mean, we have a lot of faculty attend and more importantly, we have literally hundreds of students who attend and and they're there just for the six 7-8 students that are graduating in completing the program and it's just a a phenomenal experience. The families, you know, feel that it's just a a wonderful, heartwarming experience Dylan and and the staff, you know, develop this wonderful slide presentation about each individual student. You know, from beginning, from their childhood to the present day and and and give stories about them. And I mean, it's just a a great, great experience for the families and the students. So that's that becomes our our graduation for them.
00:36:53 Brooke Langan
So we have that we have this graduation, and this is a very personalized graduation for these students, and it does really highlight the what they've been included in and what they've achieved over the course of their three years. We have talked about and we are eager to move forward the ability for these students to walk across the stage. They will not be receiving an ESU diploma but this certificate that, and so Dom, I'm glad you talked about the CTP certification because we do believe in our program, we believe in the importance of it. And I think everyone deserves that right to walk across that stage. So if we move to that this year, we're not going to get rid of that personalized ceremony. It means too much to our students. And like Dom said, there's more ESU ongoing college students in attendance, then probably faculty staff parents and siblings because all the students come, they want to hear more about these students that they've spent the last three years with. So that is one of those areas that we would like to expand upon, but we don't want to move away from something that has been so, so greatly accepted and looked forward to other pieces to this puzzle that are are part of this is that during last year worked with the parents and the students of of those who have graduated from the program and developed a homecoming event for them here at ESU, just like every other college part of that graduation life is coming back for homecoming, and we have lots of different groups across campus that come back, set up tents for the whole day, play games. You see a lot of corn hole, a lot of barbecuing, and Dylan, do you wanna just talk briefly? I know you're in the process of setting up this year's homecoming, but it was really fantastic to see these graduates have the ability to come back with their families or on their own and celebrate and see each other.
00:38:54 Dylan Doran
Yeah. So that last year was our first annual one. So we just started it up and we had a huge turn out of over 150 people come back for it, which was a little unexpected. But I guess expected at the same time. So this year.
I am we’re prepping right now. I'm actually from the committee because I can no longer. I can't do it by myself with that many people because I know more people will be back for it. But it's definitely something all the parents and alumni have really loved. I heard from a lot of them that they enjoyed coming back, seeing the campus. So much has changed on the campus and all the way back from 2013 when we finished our first cohort, and this year’s my personal goal is to get that first cohort back. They they didn't come to last year, but I would love to get them to come back and meet them because. I have personally never met them yet, but yes, it's an exciting time.
00:39:46 Brooke Langan
I think another thing that I'll just quickly highlight is that.
Dr. Cavaiuolo also hosts. We call it Through their Eyes. It's a their Eyes conference. And this was a this is an opportunity for individuals who have different abilities and disabilities, they come to ESU and they speak to our our student body about their experiences so that they have so that we have a better understanding of what life is like through their eyes. And I know that a few of our past graduates have come back to share where they are, as well as other individuals who were not part of our CILLS program, but having those opportunities to bring individuals back to share their successes after graduation has really been important to our community and through their eyes is just another way, just like our homecoming, just like our graduation ceremony, to be able to give our students that experience and be impactful to all of us here.
00:40:51 Valerie Lehr
Thank you all very much. This was a a wonderful conversation learning about skills was for me quite inspiring, and I, you know, I I just want to thank you for the work that you're doing because you're clearly fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in in a pretty unique and very powerful way. So thank you both for the conversation and for your work.
00:41:14 Domenico Cavaiuolo
Thank you for having us.
00:41:16 Valerie Lehr
To our listeners, thank you for joining us. If you wish the Middle States Commission to highlight the efforts of your institution in a future podcast, then please visit msche.org back slash pillars of change to submit your suggestion. On behalf of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and our guests, I'm Valerie Lehr, and I again, thank you for joining us today.