The University of South Carolina Aiken is developing a program designed to give students with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to attend college.
Called Learning is For Everyone, or LIFE, it is a postsecondary education program that will give students with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to attend a two-year, residential program on the university’s campus.
Melissa Martin, director of Pacer LIFE, said three ID students will share a dorm room with a resident assistant.
“A huge part of this will be independent living and getting them to living on our campus,” she said. “The second part is functional skills. There’s daily living skills, cooking, nutrition, budgeting, navigating, trying to find transportation in a town that doesn’t have free transportation, all of those types of skills.”
While developing the program, Martin and colleagues created a survey that was given to the Aiken County Public School District to distribute to parents. Forty-five families responded with 37 saying they would be likely, or very likely, to enroll their child in such a program.
USC Aiken is holding a series of open houses for students and teachers to learn more about the program.
The first was held March 29 for students from Aiken and Midland Valley High Schools.
“The students I help are currently on a non-diploma track where they weren’t learning work readiness skills and this gives them an opportunity to continue to grow that,” said Chera Richardson, a program specialist with the school district. “A lot of our students, once they exit high school, they’re kind of lost and unsure of what they want to do. A lot of them end up sitting home with no direction and no independence. And this gives them the opportunity and the support.”
Open houses for other high schools are scheduled for April 19 and May 3.
Martin said there are 300 similar programs nationwide, including eight in Georgia and five in South Carolina.
“All the other five programs have been so generous with their time and their resources and, and teaching us how do we do billing, and all these things, because it’s so different than just taking classes,” she said. “In South Carolina, we have the S.C. Credential. That’s where our students take very basic reading and math, but then the other part of their day is vocational training, and portfolio type things. That’s really who we’re targeting, students in the credential program. They won’t have a high school diploma, but they have more than that certificate of completion of attendance.”
For parents of a child with intellectual disabilities, one of their greatest fears can be how their child will live after their death.
“I think a lot of our parents are wanting something like this,” Richardson said. “We’ve had almost 40 kids in the last year that have passed their driver’s permit. So, that’s kind of a step again towards that independence and anything that we can add on to that to allow them to be able to understand what it means to live on their own so that when mom and dad are gone, or even before that so that they’re living on their own. That’s huge.”
Martin said the program got the green light from the faculty assembly in February. It still must be voted on by the University System Board of Trustees, but she is confident it will be approved.
The tentative start date for Pacer LIFE is Fall 2023.
Dana Lynn McIntyre is a general assignment reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach her at dana@theaugustapress.com
