University Advancement

Public Relations and Strategic Communications

NEWS RELEASE

CSUN Center Changing the World for People with Disabilities

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., April 3, 2007) — One of the toughest choices a young person makes is the one to go to college. Add on a disability, and the decision can be even tougher. But at Cal State Northridge, college is possible for persons with disabilities.

Donna Marie Bernis, a graduating senior majoring in sociology, has been at Northridge for three years and remembers all too well the fear about her decision to come here after years-long treatments for a bipolar disability.

"I know when I get to the center, I’m going to find kindness," Bernis said. "I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what I did without them—all of them. They have hearts of gold. I have no family in L.A. and they were my family. I’ve been through a war in life and they never judged me. I was never scared to come here."

The center she was referring to is CSUN’s Center on Disabilities, which guides disabled students into finding a cohesive, effective and comfortable style for managing the difficulties that can grow out of a disability.

"We do not want to see challenged students abandon their dreams of fulfillment and achievement," said Mary Ann Cummins-Prager, director of the Center on Disabilities and interim assistant vice president for student access and support services. "A student can be derailed by disability-related health problems and the complexities of family and social relationships a disability imposes.

"A typical story that I hear from disabled students is that from the time they were small, they were told they would never go to college. Whether out of concern or out of ignorance, they were not college bound."

Cummins-Prager noted, "Every day, a person with disabilities gets up and must overcome barriers. A student who has a key to unlock a building and doesn’t have the use of his hands to manipulate a key figures out a way to get in the building. The obstacles to being independent are so astonishing."

The Center on Disabilities provides accommodations for almost 800 Northridge disabled students each semester, offering a wide array of services, from providing a note-taker in the classroom and offering a quiet location in its office to take their exams with extended time, to converting textbooks from print to an electronic version or Braille.

The center is also responsible for the acclaimed annual Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference.

"The conference grew out of a very pragmatic beginning as part of the campus-based student services program," Cummins-Prager said. "In the early to mid-‘80s, we had students who were trying to figure out how to use technology. More and more personal computers were being used in conjunction with the classroom. Yet we had an audience of students who were blind, low vision, had mobility impairment, learning disabilities and who could not use the existing technology.

"In figuring out what to do, we became aware of this very new field called ‘assistive technology,’" she said. "In 1984, the very first conference of its kind in higher education was held on this campus. From that event, we started to grow."

One of the conference’s goals has been to re-ignite public awareness of the barriers facing people with disabilities and how technology can mitigate those barriers.

"Whether it’s related to their educational experience or how they access technology in the school or home setting, whether it is as professionals or simply people with personal goals to maintain an independent lifestyle, we see assistive technology allowing people with disabilities the ability to experience academic, personal and career success," Cummins-Prager said.

On campus, the center helps faculty and staff acknowledge that disabled students are students first and students with disabilities second. In doing so, they show them how to better serve these students so they can use all of the services of campus, from the library to joining clubs and organizations.

"I see what we do as echoing the prime mission of the California State University, which is teaching, research and community service, and through our programs, we do fulfill that mission," Cummins-Prager said. "We do quite a bit of our own teaching—we do not do research per se, we disseminate research through the conference, and we’re a model for community service by offering programs that are needed locally and across the country through the assistive technology certificate program. We’re also available for consultation. We’re out in the community talking that up."

The center offers an online Assistive Technology Applications Certificate Program (ATACP) in conjunction with CSUN’s Tseng College of Extended Learning at various locations around the country. With more than 2,200 graduates to date, the ATACP is the largest such certificate program in the nation.

"It’s far reaching if you consider each one of those certificates represents a practitioner—educators, human resource professionals, speech and language professionals, people who work at independent living centers," noted Cummins-Prager. "The well-known and unique program serves to improve the professionalism in the field where no degree in assistive technology exists, except for engineers."

Cummins-Prager reflected how being a part of this field becomes integral to one’s life. "When you go out, you live it—you notice when there are no curb cuts in the cement, when at the supermarket you see barriers for people to get stuff off the shelves and be able to navigate the aisles," she said.

And, she noted, on campus she never stops being amazed by the courage and perseverance of students with disabilities.

"The students I serve—everything they do requires extra effort," Cummins-Prager said. "Patience, calmness, problem-solving, dealing with a situation as it comes, judgment—these students have problem-solving skills that I will never have."