SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 
WEBCAST :CAREER PLANNING EXPERIENCES OF COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH 
ASD 
    
Services provided by:  Caption First, Inc.
   
    >> ELIZABETH EVANS GETZEL:  Good afternoon.  Thank you for 
joining me on the webcast career planning experiences of 
college students with ASD.  Today I will be discussing a study 
that is currently underway at the VCU-RRTC.  For today's 
presentation, I'll be covering the results of specific 
questions or portions of the study.  I will not be covering 
the study protocol or the Institutional Review Board IRB 
process that we underwent.  If you are interested in learning 
more about our study protocol, please feel free to contact me 
and I will be happy to share this information with you.
    Just to give you a little bit of background about the 
study, we are funded through NIDDR, and we are focused on 
identifying effective components of a career, collaborative 
career planning model.  This has been a particular interest of 
ours for a number of years.  We've done various studies and 
work demonstration projects with college students with 
disabilities on this whole career planning process, since it 
is so critical when students are going through college to 
really look at that next transition, which is into their 
chosen career.
    So as part of our interest and work across the disability 
spectrum, if you will, we were given an opportunity to develop 
a study that really focuses on students on the autism 
spectrum, just to look at the particularly unique needs of 
this group.  We are seeing more students with ASD entering 
post-secondary education, yet there is still very limited 
information or research in the literature about what their 
experiences are while in college, so we really wanted to focus 
on sort of that career planning process for students and 
realizing that there are organizations on campus and in the 
community that really can share their expertise and 
collaborate to really help this particular population as well 
as other college students with disabilities.  And this 
includes vocational rehabilitation, counselors, disability 
support services staff and college career center counselors, 
each bringing their expertise about career planning and 
employment and together really providing perhaps a more 
comprehensive collaborative model, and that is the goal of our 
study.
    Today, we really will be focusing on the experiences of 18 
college students with autism.  We are in the process of 
completing the interviews.  We have 18, our goal is 20, and we 
are right now in the midst of conducting structured interviews 
with rehabilitative counselors, DSS office staff and career 
centers.  So in order to look at what is happening in the area 
of career planning for students with ASD, we used a structured 
interview process to gather this information and really 
looking at where they are currently in their planning and 
preparation activities, what are they using on campus in terms 
of services and supports and how is their satisfaction with 
these services, as well as their overall experiences on the 
post-secondary campus.
    We know that for individuals with autism that there has 
been research showing that really employment defines them as 
to who they are, that this is really critical for them, and is 
often more important than a social network, and as we know, 
students with autism do have difficulties in the area of 
social networking and developing those relationships, so it's 
really important for this group of students to have a career 
goal that has well-developed technical skills and successful 
employment experiences because it is such a significant part 
of who they see themselves.
    We're going to be going through a series of tables and 
graphs just to give you an idea of who the participants are 
and to give an ideas of some of their particular needs.  We 
will move through this and then at the end of the presentation 
we'll cover what some of the emerging trends are across the 18 
students that we've interviewed and looking then forward to 
what recommendations we are looking to develop and how that 
ties in then to the second part of the study, if you will, 
with the various service providers in the area of career 
planning and employment.
    As you can see, we had a predominance of males that 
participated in the interview process and a majority were from 
four-year institutions, and these individuals were attending 
college in Virginia.  Our focus was on the state of Virginia 
and the experience of students in our two and four-year 
private and public colleges and universities.  Just to touch 
for a moment on how we located our participants, we did use a 
purposeful sampling process.  We provided information to in 
particular disability support services offices across the 
state with information about the study and asked if they would 
send that out to individuals who had registered at their 
office.  Once the information was sent out, students then had 
contact information and could volunteer to participate and 
only at that time would we know who they were because they had 
contacted us.  Once they had contacted us, we sent information 
about the study and the purpose and he we provided a consents 
form and once the individual signed the consent form that they 
were willing to participate, then interviews were scheduled.
    The interviews were done face to face, which meant that 
interviewers traveled to different parts of the state to 
ensure that there could be that kind of connection and 
discussion with the individuals and hopefully to ease any 
concerns and to make them feel comfortable about the 
information we were seeking.
    A two-part instrument was developed for these interviews.  
The first part, and we will be going through many of those, 
many of these slides on demographic background information so 
that we could gather that on the participants, along with some 
short answers and menu-driven questions that really focused on 
the supports and services that they were either receiving or 
not receiving through on campus or in the communities.  One 
thing that we really focus on is looking at what's happening 
on campus and in the community, and we have found over the 
years that it's really important to see what connections are 
happening in the community because that is where, as we call 
the second big transition occurs, as students exit college and 
go into the community and how connected they are in the 
community and already seeking resources that will help them 
facilitate that transition as well as while living in the 
community.
    Students were able -- we sent the interview questions and 
everything to them so they could become very familiar with 
what we were asking, and they were able to, if they chose, to 
complete this demographic and short answer prior to the actual 
interview.  It could be done by the individual independently, 
or if they chose to with the interviewer, if they had 
particular questions as they completed that section.  That 
followed with seven open-ended questions that we asked to get 
more in-depth information concerning their career planning 
process, their perspectives on important academic career and 
college experiences, so we could begin to get a feel for 
individually as well as across the participants what their 
experiences were about on the post-secondary level.
    We did a lot of work looking at the types of questions and 
trying to be sensitive to this particular population and their 
interaction, social skills, and one limitation of the study 
could be that we did ask open-ended questions, but we really 
tried to look at research methods that would help us overcome 
that.  Looking at the participants' academic status, we really 
were looking pretty well split among freshmen, sophomore and 
junior, we did have one grad student and a student that had 
just recently, a couple students that had just recently 
graduated from college.  You can see that their GPA range is 
2.2 to 3.7, and that there are a range of career majors that 
students were involved in.  About half the students did 
express that they looked at particular career majors based on 
their areas of strong interest or strengths and that is seen 
as a positive of students with autism because they can have 
very focused interest areas and they can build on that 
interest and seek careers that really provide opportunities 
for them to show their strengths.
    One student talked about her ability in math and how she 
enjoyed math and a high school teacher had said, you know, you 
might want to look at going into a major or career as an 
accountant, and she really felt that that helped to validate 
her potential and looked into that as a particular career 
option.  Other students expressed having positive experiences 
acting or directing, even writing scripts for their high 
school drama clubs and felt that these experiences really led 
into majors of English or film making.
    The issue with this whole career planning process for these 
individuals, while it is truly a good thing that they're 
looking at what their interests and strengths are in the 
process of looking at careers and majors, their actual 
exposure or experience in terms of how that plays out in an 
actual career is very limited, and it was very limited across 
the 18 participants that we interviewed.  They really lacked 
any type of work experience or even volunteer or exposure to 
careers so they would really have sort of that day-to-day 
knowledge, if you will.
    Some had no work experience at all, and others had very 
entry-level jobs.  We asked one particular participant about, 
she was entering grad school, she had completed her 
undergraduate work, and this individual had never worked, so 
was clearly focused the whole time on academic studies.  And 
when we asked about her career choice and now going into 
graduate school, we talked about what that might look like to 
her.  And we knew that for students with autism, that 
oftentimes putting themselves into another situation that 
they've had no experience is very difficult for them.  But we 
were asking questions around had they talked with an advisor, 
had they, you know, met with anyone who could just sort of 
give a picture of that.  And she had said no and that her 
major point was that she would have a better idea about all of 
this once she got into grad school.  So taking classes to this 
individual was a way of understanding what needed to happen in 
employment, and clearly we know that how those academics 
transfer into employment can be very different as you look at 
the day-to-day experiences. 
    We again are focusing on the career planning process, so we 
wanted to know what their experiences were with their campus 
career center, and clearly these participants have not used 
their career center on the campuses where they're attending.  
Those that did usually -- and across the board, it was more of 
a one-time experience, maybe going to a class on interviewing 
skills or on resume writing.  A few did meet with a career 
counselor, but what sort of came out of what services they 
used at the career center was very short-term.  Although they 
expressed great satisfaction with the services that they had 
received at the career center, again, it was more of a 
one-time or two-time experience.  One student who was majoring 
in film stated that he really didn't understand why he should 
go to the career center because he knew what he wanted to be.  
Another student spoke about wishing about opportunities to 
meet with potential employers about their career interests and 
was not familiar with the fact that career centers have career 
fairs and informational interviewing opportunities.  So many 
of the services or supports that they expressed needing can be 
provided through various mechanisms at career centers, through 
disability support services offices as well as vocational 
rehabilitation, but that awareness of what those services 
involved is clearly needed. 
    As you can see, family members are critical and play a 
major role in their source of information concerning careers.  
The individuals, the participants did have involvement with 
career counselors at the post-secondary level.  Again, that 
was more of a one or two-time experience, but there were some 
that clearly accessed those services, their teachers in high 
schools, faculty, so they are getting sources, guidance 
counselor in high school, disability support services, they 
are getting information but it is a matter of really 
developing and helping and assisting students to put that 
information together and help them as they move through their 
career planning.
    When we were talking about the influence of family members, 
one student indicated that his parent had discouraged him from 
pursuing a risky career in acting and was strongly encouraging 
him to become a teacher.  Parents really did -- they were 
highly involved with their children in terms of researching 
various careers to guide them, and some had arranged summer 
work experiences so that they would get a feel for that.  So 
the family unit really worked for several of the students to 
really try to engage more in the process of learning about 
careers and what was involved in those careers on a day-to-day 
basis, what were the expectations and what was required in the 
work environment.
    When asked about their level of preparation to enter the 
workforce in their career area, remember we had freshmen and 
sophomore, we did have juniors, so it's not surprising that 
some felt unprepared with lots of questions about what was 
involved.  We did have, though, almost an equal number said 
that they felt that they were becoming prepared, they still 
had questions about the work environments, and a couple felt 
that they were unprepared.  We only had one individual that 
really felt that they were prepared at that point to enter the 
employment arena.  When we asked further about the questions 
that they had or where they felt unprepared, a number of them 
said that they would really -- it would really help them if 
they had work experiences or internships, they really felt 
they needed help with interview skills, so job search 
strategies, how you go about securing employment, resume 
development and information on the Americans With Disabilities 
Act.
    This is laid out in this particular table in terms of what 
types of activities they need that would help them gain this 
type of information that they were looking at.  They really 
were interested in job shadowing and business mentor, they 
were really looking at seeking advice and information from 
individuals that were currently in their career interest area, 
so there was a great need for informational interviews for 
that clear exploration and they really wanted that to be 
experiential through internships or work experience, doing job 
shadowing and mentors.  One area that I think is of particular 
note that is something that I think as a field we really need 
to focus more is is a disclosure plan for the employer.  
Students felt that there was a real need for that.  When we 
were talking with the students about their work experiences, 
one student had a physical disability as well as autism, and 
he disclosed his physical disability but not his autism.  He 
was the only one that out of those that had any work 
experience that actually disclosed, the remainder did not 
disclose a disability.  So really, I think this is an area 
that is very important that students need to really look at in 
terms of being able then to be in the work environment and 
successful based on receiving accommodations.
    When we are looking at other areas, other campus services 
that students access, we ask about registering with the 
disability support service office, and clearly all of them 
have done that.  A majority are using their accommodations 
provided.  And what's important about this is that although 
this is a small sample and certainly more research of this 
type is needed for us to be able to generalize, but if you 
look he at the national trend, very few or a very small number 
actually come on campus and disclose their disability and get 
accommodations.  So this group clearly sees the need for that 
and is accessing the disability support service network.
    When we look at and ask them about the most frequent 
accommodations used, you can see that extended time in the 
alternative testing were primarily the ones that were seen as 
most helpful.  What we see are sort of the typical 
accommodations that are provided by the DSS office, and just 
to let you know some of the things that we're hearing in this 
process of our structured interviews from DSS offices as well 
as career centers and voc rehab counselors is more strategies 
to deal sort of with that emotional or social networking side 
issues that students with autism have difficulties with, 
especially trying to live independently and be independent on 
college campuses.  So as you can see, they are using some of 
the standard accommodations that are provided, and with the 
top two, students express these were very helpful in their 
academic success. 
    We ask about other campus services they were using, 
students for the most part are seeking academic advisement.  
As you can see, very few, if any, are going to the counseling 
center if there were particular issues at that they were 
experiencing.  Some were involved with some mentoring, so at 
some of the colleges that were programs or support groups or 
things that provided that type of experience for students, but 
not across the board in terms of that being available on all 
campuses.  And they were utilizing tutoring and the writing 
center.  So they were going out onto the campus and accessing 
services that are available to all college students and 
working in the areas of making sure that academically they 
were prepared.
    When we looked at sort of those academic services needed 
and what they expressed to really more fully assist them on 
campus, we were looking at areas of managing their stress, 
their time, organizational skills, and this is not unusual for 
college students with disabilities or college students in 
general in terms of their need for these particular types of 
supports.
    In terms of living arrangements, when we ask about that, it 
was split between being at home and living on campus, and two 
were living off of campus but not at their home.  This is 
not -- we're seeing more and more students in general, because 
of cost and that, who do decide to live at home, however, we 
do want to potentially explore this further, which we didn't 
in this particular study, because there is some research that 
indicates that sometimes the decision to live at home is based 
on the fact that they are most comfortable there, that they 
know their family understands them and how they are, their 
behaviors, their particular quirks, so they choose to live at 
home based on that.  We did not go into any great depth as to 
why living at home was selected as opposed to being on campus 
or off campus, but there is still that need for independent 
living skills and issues being more independent, obviously.  
One student we interviewed said that he was so focused on the 
end of the semester, finals and, you know, preparing papers 
and just very, very focused on getting through the semester, 
that he literally forgot to eat.  He would eat minimally, and 
he lost 50 pounds.
    So when his parents saw him at the end of the semester, 
they were highly concerned about the dramatic physical change 
in their son.  So we know that there are still some of those 
independent living issue skills that are needed for students.  
When we asked about some of the nonacademic information 
needed, clearly they talked about solving problems, learning 
more about their disability and how that impacts their 
learning and socializing and living in the community, making 
decisions and setting goals.  Setting goals is really 
something that we have focused on in our research over the 
years because we find that students with disabilities and 
students in general, but in our work specifically with 
students with disabilities, setting goals seemed to be very 
much a needed skill.  So we were not surprised to see that 
come up on our list of nonacademic information that's needed.
    What was expressed by the students was a need to have 
mentors or someone that they felt they could go to to seek 
advice or information, and I think that speaks to in some ways 
not having that social network that is so important to be able 
to talk with friends about particular issues or to go to 
someone that represents or is a mentor or someone that they 
would seek advice who may have more life experiences than 
they've had.  When we asked them about how they wanted to get 
information about, you know, solving problems or learning 
about their disability, those type of things that they felt 
they needed, most said they wanted to do it on a one on one or 
a small group, which is interesting because although these 
students are very computer savvy by blogging or surfing or 
talking with friends and family, obtaining information through 
a website or learning over a website they felt was not their 
first preference.  Now, I know that there is sort of a growing 
research about learning and taking coursework via the web that 
could be very successful for students with autism, so we 
really need to be looking more and more into that in terms of 
how information is provided, especially in the areas that they 
feel that that may be very conducive for academic needs but 
there are nonacademics that support that of solving problems   
and that type of thing, may need to be presented through other 
mechanisms.
    So we've gone through a number of slides on information, 
giving you an idea of the participants and some of their 
responses and some of their needs that they've expressed, so 
what does this mean in terms of some emerging themes?  And 
today really you've just seen a very small snapshot of some of 
the information that we've collected so far, and we hope to 
then really provide furthermore in depth information through 
written materials or other types of presentations.
    So let's look at what some of the emerging themes are.  
Again, choosing a major, as you recall, family did play a 
critical role in what direction or major that the students 
were seeking and guidance on career choices, and again, there 
was sort of that encouraging that they were looking at a 
selection of careers of their interests and in areas they 
excelled in, but yet those chases were really made on very 
limited exposure to actual work environments that could be 
obtained through work experience or volunteer experiences. 
    Limited use of the college career centers, again, the 
students that we interviewed really lacked an awareness of 
what career centers could offer, so limited in the sense of 
them not having enough information to really make informed 
decisions.  And the career center, going through a career 
center, does mean that it does require an initiation on the 
part of the individual to go, to schedule an appointment or to 
go and look through materials, and we see a similar theme as 
what we had seen in some of our other work with students with 
disabilities, that sometimes going into a career center and 
not really sure about what to do feels very overwhelming to an 
individual.  One of the participants said that she did go into 
a career center but everybody seemed so busy and she wasn't 
quite sure what to ask.  So we have been trying to do work on 
making even the physical layout, you know, discussing with 
career centers to make it more welcoming to students with 
disabilities and know that career centers are working very 
hard to do this, but that this still can remain an issue for 
some of the students that we've been interviewing.
    And their limited use, they were very satisfied with the 
services, but they were sort of a one-time kind of experience, 
that there wasn't a continuing building a relationship with 
the center to get information.  The accommodation use, again, 
all of the students had disclosed, they were using -- a 
majority were using their accommodations, which was very 
encouraging that there was a connection with this office and 
that extended time on tests and alternate testing really did 
seem to be the effective -- what they found most effective in 
helping them. 
    We did talk with students about their overall experience on 
the college campus as what they would really like individuals, 
especially the post-secondary faculty and staff to know.  They 
really would like that individuals perceive ASD in a more 
positive light, that they don't need a cure but that their 
interests, their strengths really can help them build a life 
around -- some of the areas of interest and can move them into 
careers that could be very satisfying, and to recognize that 
they still really have a great deal of difficulty in social 
situations and that they're not being rude or some of their 
behavior could be misinterpreted, but there needs to be sort 
of a broader culture of understanding about students with 
autism.
    They talked about the need to have things explained in more 
detail.  Of course, this is not always possible, but when 
things are happening, to get as much advance notice as 
possible so that they can adjust to any changes in their 
schedule or things that are happening.  And for some, they 
said even the environment where they are in terms of learning 
or where they're studying or that kind of thing, that 
something like flickering lights can be very very difficult 
for some of them and can really impede their learning and 
comprehending information.
    Personal management skills, solving problems, such as who 
to go to with questions or figuring out the college process 
itself, which some were on larger campuses and it still can be 
just as confusing on smaller campuses, it is a new system, and 
we need to recognize that, and that the system, the college 
process really needs to be explained and learned.
    Solving problems is a challenge, such as where to go to get 
their questions answered or sort of figuring out that college 
process, that, since it is a new environment, a whole new 
system, that can be very overwhelming for students, and where 
to go for financial aid or getting their disability 
documentation, all of those things they find can create a 
sense of being overwhelmed or anxiety-inducing.  Again, the 
parents playing a significant role and connecting students 
with services and advocating on their behalf, students talked 
about that, how their parents really have been their advocates 
and playing that role and connecting them.
    They really are seeking better skills for meeting deadlines 
and managing their stress.  Again, this is something that we 
have seen across the board, if you will, for college students 
with disabilities and really goal setting that meeting 
deadlines, it's really all about goal setting and some of the 
other skills that are needed, time management organizational 
skills.
    Peer relationships, this is so critical, as we know, in 
life and know that this can be an area of great distress and 
anxiety for students with autism.  Some of their free time 
activities, again, were more individually based and not 
necessarily involving a larger group of individuals that they 
could connect with.  Some of the experiences that they've 
tried, you know, being involved in activities on campus can be 
at times disappointing and a struggle to fit in.  When asked a 
little bit more about this, you know, one participant replied 
when talking about friends or connections on campus, he said, 
I have none.  Others really talked about issues of fitting in, 
not understanding jokes, if they're in an area with a great 
deal of noise, it's difficult for them to feel comfortable in 
those types of situations.  And others saying that really 
feeling so overwhelmed with their coursework and things that 
they needed to be doing otherwise, it was putting sort of that 
social part on hold, that their primary focus was really 
trying to get through the academic side.
    But we did have students that ranged from spending probably 
too much time with friends, really trying to work so hard to 
fit in, that their academics may be impacted, but others 
feeling extremely -- and for the moist part, a majority of the 
participants that we spoke with and interviewed really felt 
extremely isolated on the campus.  Some are trying to learn 
their social skills through counseling, but for the most part, 
the individuals that we interviewed were acutely aware of the 
social difficulties they were facing and really looking for 
ways that they could move forward and try to connect with 
individuals, their peers on campus.
    Again, improving their college experiences, they talked 
about having access to relevant work experiences and 
internship opportunities to better understand their areas of 
interest and majors and employment, being more prepared in 
those critical areas of note taking and organizational skills, 
some even talked about money management, definitely those 
independent living skills.  It's interesting that they wanted 
more course selections which probably focused on their high 
interest areas and wanting more coursework in those areas, and 
less group work.  Group work can be an extremely difficult 
situation for students.  In fact, when we interviewed one 
student and there were class projects and the group would 
first meet, this individual would apologize to the group that 
they had him in their group, that he felt that he wasn't going 
to be able to contribute much or just wanted them to know that 
he felt badly about that, and that was -- that really --
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