oa A multifaceted approach to supporting STEM/SBE students with learning disabilities: Highlights of engineering student participants

Students with a learning disability (LD) comprise between 46 to 61% of all students with disabilities in postsecondary education, making LD the most widely diagnosed disability. Very often LD has a significant negative impact for those college students in both their academic work and interpersonal encounters due to frequent misunderstandings and unawareness by faculty, staff, and fellow students. To address the challenges of LD, the University of Florida is developing and implementing a unique model of multifaceted approaches and services for these students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), called Comprehensive Support for STEM Students with Learning Disability (CS3LD). We form a cohort of students with LD (CS3LD scholar) who are mentored and supported in the areas of academics, health, personal and professional development. Simultaneously, we build a campus network of health and STEM units/personnel sensitive to and able to address the needs of STEM students with LD. Grounded in Social Cognitive Theory, this approach is designed to impact the student (personal), encounters (interpersonal), and our campus environment (institutional). At the personal level, mechanisms for CS3LD scholar engagement are designed to foster self-advocacy, self-efficacy, and increased campus connection and participation. Scholar activities include individual mentorships, group activities, and student-driven project initiatives. At the interpersonal level, multi-disciplinary mentorship teams are designed for each CS3LD scholar to improve mentoring and professional enculturation to STEM disciplines for students with LD. Mentorship teams address individual academic and disability/health related needs. At the institutional level, a campus-wide network of health and STEM faculty, staff, graduate students, and academic units knowledgeable of LD is created to coordinate efforts in facilitating the success of STEM students with LD. A Partnership Council is created to increase communication and examine ways to better meet the needs of students with LD on campus. The Partnership Council includes faculty representatives from academic and health units across the University of Florida (UF) campus, as well as CS3LD scholar representatives who contribute student perspectives to the conversation.