MEDIA RELEASE

New Director of CSUN’s Center on Disabilities Named

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., May 16, 2008) — Elyse Chaplin, former Director of Disability Support Services and Assistant Dean of Student Life at Brown University, has been named the new director of Cal State Northridge’s internationally recognized Center on Disabilities.

Chaplin, who has been working on her doctorate in higher educational theory and policy studies—with an emphasis on serving students with disabilities at the postsecondary level—at the University of Toronto, will assume her new post in mid July.

"Elyse Chaplin has exactly the right combination of leadership and vision that we were searching for in the next director of the Center on Disabilities," said Mary Ann Cummins-Prager, CSUN’s associate vice president for student access and support services and former head of the center. "Her passionate commitment to the creation of an inclusive society in which the barriers to personal, academic and career success no longer exist make her an ideal fit on our campus, which has a long and distinguished history of support for persons with disabilities."

Cummins-Prager said Chaplin has a strong background in the disability services area in a postsecondary setting, noting that while at Brown University she was responsible for the full range of accommodation services for more than 400 students with disabilities and oversight of a U.S. Department of Education grant on "Universal Instruction Design." In addition, Chaplin has been a consultant at Harvard University in the Student Disability Services office.

Chaplin said she was "truly delighted" to be joining CSUN as the new director of the Center on Disabilities.

"I am excited and proud to have the opportunity to lead such an exceptional team of professionals who are so clearly dedicated to the mission of making a difference in the lives of students with disabilities," she said. "I look forward to inspiring and supporting new and innovative opportunities for continued growth, success and pride for the Center on Disabilities as well as toward the continued level of excellence and growth for the annual assistive technology conference."

CSUN’s Center on Disabilities garners international attention each year with its annual Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference. The conference draws thousands of people from around the world—academics, people with disabilities and some of the world’s leading technology entrepreneurs—all interested in exploring ways technology can make life easier for persons with disabilities.

On campus, the center provides accommodations for more than 850 Northridge students with disabilities 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 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 the services at CSUN, from the library to joining clubs and organizations.

The center also 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 2,000 graduates to date, the ATACP is the largest such certificate program in the nation.