FAYETTEVILLE -- About 50 people gathered Wednesday to learn more about how they could help bring to Arkansas a college degree program designed for people with cognitive disabilities.
Northwest Arkansas Community College planned to offer the Occupational and Life Skills program starting this fall, but administrators announced in March they were suspending the program, largely because of concerns about sustaining adequate enrollment.
Facebook campaign
The campaign to bring an Occupational and Life Skills program to Arkansas has a website at Facebook.com/OLSnat…. It includes a link to a page where interested families may sign a petition to show their desire for such a program in the state.
Source: Staff report
Three people had enrolled and another 14 people applied for admission before the college's decision became public, according to the program's former director. The college hoped to enroll between 12 and 14 people for every new cohort of students that began the program each fall.
Marci Muhlestein, national director of the Occupational and Life Skills program headquartered at Bellevue College in Washington state, hosted Wednesday's meeting for interested families at the Chancellor Hotel. The meeting's main purpose was to gauge community support for such a program in the state.
Muhlestein said a college needs to know there's enough interest before it decides to adopt the program. She pointed families to a petition on Facebook and urged them to invite other families and prospective students to sign it.
"Your job is to reach out and get more people on the list," she said. "We can't really go to a college until we know we have enough supporters in the community."
The goal is to collect 500 signatures on the petition, she said.
The four-year, 60-credit-hour associate degree program is designed to give adults with cognitive disabilities the chance to learn hard and soft skills essential for life and work in preparation for employment and greater independence. Bellevue College runs the only program like it in the country. The program has been accredited since 2006.
Hard skills involve specific tasks that can be defined and measured, such as typing or operating machinery. Soft skills, sometimes called "people skills," cover things such as communication, teamwork and time management, which are often hard to measure. Most of those with cognitive disabilities need help with both kinds of skills.
Cognitive disabilities cover a wide range of disabilities that affect mental functions. Nearly 4 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 in Arkansas have a cognitive disability, and only 19 percent of those people are employed. About 85 percent of the graduates of Bellevue College's program are employed, working an average of 25 hours per week, Muhlestein said.
The Occupational and Life Skills National Network has created a turn-key model that can be replicated on a college campus in Arkansas.
Among those in attendance at Wednesday's meeting were six people who would be interested in applying for the program if it came to Arkansas.
They included Veronica Vasiloff, 21, of Mountain Home. She graduated from Mountain Home High School in 2013, but said she's had no success finding a job because of her disability and where she lives. She went to the information session for the program at Northwest Arkansas Community College, and realized the program offered her a chance at a degree in a career that interests her.
"When I heard the program was canceled at NWACC, I was beyond disappointed and didn't know what to do next," Vasiloff said, in a video posted on the OLS Arkansas Community Facebook page.
Others in the audience were family members of potential students and educators.
Gayla Schuster, a special education teacher at Heritage High School in Rogers, came to the meeting to show her support for the program.
Schuster said she believes Arkansas has the numbers to support the program. She noted her school is adding two special-education teaching positions this school year. She finds many special-education students want to go to college, but they would struggle without the kind of support the Occupational and Life Skills program provides.
The program "would be an outstanding college experience I could connect my students to," Schuster said.
Tina Alley of Little Rock was prepared to move to Northwest Arkansas this year to be with her autistic son, Grant, so he could enroll in the program that had been promoted at Northwest Arkansas Community College.
"I feel strongly this program would be wonderful in Arkansas," Alley said. "There's nothing like it in the state."
Muhlestein said she's had conversations about the program with people at Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, the second-biggest two-year college in the state.
"Pulaski's on the fence. They haven't told me yes or no," she said.
NW News on 06/09/2016