From the Tuscaloosa News:

The University of Alabama has created a new program to help students with autism spectrum disorder successfully navigate the academic and social realms of college. It presently has three students, at a pricetag of $3,000 per semester each, and is designed to add three or four freshman students each year.

Transition and support programs like the one at UA are starting to gain attention within the realm of autism. But they are rare and relatively new to college campuses.

“We’re one of the first five in the country,” said Dr. Laura Grofer Klinger, director of UA’s Autism Spectrum Disorders Research Clinic, which established the program. “We haven’t really advertised our program, and we’re already getting plenty of calls to fill up the class [for next year]. We are getting calls from all over the country. … That is something we shouldn’t have been surprised about, but we were. We are even getting calls from people who want to come here three years from now.”

The UA program includes group and individual counseling that focuses on improving interactions with instructors and building relationships with peers and covers everything from getting to class on time to dating. Each student in the program is assigned a doctoral psychology student as a mentor. The students can call the mentor 24 hours a day and are required to meet with him or her twice a week.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 9:45 am and is filed under autism, post-secondary education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post