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GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY FINAL REPORT (13)
However, as described in the Milestone 1 report, disability services professionals are also stretched thin. While these professionals expressed an interest in and commitment to the career development of students with disabilities on their campuses, they also described limitations to the services they could provide, due to funding, time, and personnel constraints. Furthermore, despite expertise in the area of disability policy in postsecondary contexts, disability service professionals do not receive specialized training in career development (Gerard et al., 2023). Thus, although disability services offices seem to be the best lever for reaching college students with disabilities, their capacity to fully support the career development of this population may be limited depending on their institutional contexts and professional training.
4. Implementation factors outside of the Foundation and disability service professionals’ control may be impacting the reach of the scholarship.
From the initial focus group conducted, disability service professionals have expressed a concern about the timeline for dispersing the scholarship, noting that students are not informed of the level of their aid until a couple of weeks before classes start. Furthermore, different institutions reported varying procedures for awarding the funding; although the disability services office was involved in the process, their partnership with other of the University offices such as financial aid varied depending on institutional factors.
The complexity of these various institutional structures and contexts may have contributed to the graduates’ and current students’ general sense that the funding seemed to appear in their account, but they were unsure of the process regarding how that funding arrived. The vagueness with which one student described this process illustrates a general lack of awareness regarding who was responsible for the award, its uses, and the transfer of funds to the student’s financial statement. The student explained, “They tell you if you’ve been awarded it or not. And then they did. They have all the money in your student account. And then they take out the money to pay for your classes, and I can pick up my books.”
However, given the generous match to the JSF Scholarship Funding by the State of Florida (Florida Statutes, Section 1009.74), any adjustments to this timeline would need to be considered in collaboration with state partners.
5. The Covid-19 pandemic may have a lingering impact for professionals, graduates, and students attending SUSF institutions.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions throughout the United States to close campus facilities in March 2020. In Florida, the 12 SUSF institutions were similarly impacted; the in-person delivery of course content by faculty was moved to online delivery, a situation in which few faculty and students had prior experience. As described by the disability services professionals in the Milestone 1 report, disability services offices faced an immediate dilemma of how to ensure students’ needs were met in an online environment.
Interviews with graduates and current students reflected a mixed impact of the pandemic. Some participants described encountering challenges in accessing services with the onset of the pandemic. As one graduate shared, “Since I transferred like prime covid time, it was so difficult to get involved and to get to know the school.” However, some others felt that the pandemic offered them a unique opportunity to manage their studies and a job, since both occurred virtually. As one graduate explained, “I love online classes. Like, I have two online classes right now. I love it. If anything, I got more side jobs, because I can’t work, but I can do side jobs here and there”. Once universities shifted back to in person learning, however, participants reported that they were no longer able to maintain the combination of their studies with employment.
Although the university closures were temporary, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the impact of the pandemic continues to linger. At minimum, our interviews with disabilities services professionals and recent research together indicate that the numbers of college students who report that they are experiencing mental health challenges and/or disabilities during and since COVID are increasing on campuses (McAfee et al., 2023), with additional implications for disability services offices that are already stretched thin.
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