hello thanks for listening to our podcast autism goes to college I’m Porche Jackson Preston an associate

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professor of Public Health at California State University Fullerton my research focuses on individual and multi-level

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approaches to Wellness and stress as a driver of health and Equity I’m also an author of hustle flow and Let It Go a

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guide to shame free wellness and I’m Gina harmston I’m a public health and wellness professor at

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Cal also at Cal State Fullerton where I’ve been deeply involved in initiative for faculty teaching and learning we’ve

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both taken the neuro Prep course which is an online professional development course for college level Educators to

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enhance all of our abilities to guide success for students on the autism spectrum this is an important program

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that’s filling a real Gap we’re here with Katherine O’Brien the host of autism goes to college podcast and I’m

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GNA hand it over to her thank you Dr Jackson Preston and harston um it’s so

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good to have you on the podcast so State Fullerton is a Cal State um Public

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University with a diverse and large student body in Southern California so

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I’m sure that there are hopefully varied professional development opportunities

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for you as instructors why did you cherose neuro

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prep um so for for me I spent a lot of years actually working for our faculty

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Development Center in the specific area of teaching and learning and this was an area we really lacked on

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in all the years that I was with them um something that faculty would ask me questions and I couldn’t answer because

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it’s not an area I know well enough and so when the opportunity came to take something from someone who is an expert

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and to really learn and understand it better that’s I was like I gotta I got to get in there I got to learn it I got

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to see what they have to say what they can teach us because it’s something that if we can seek out those experts that’s

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where we’re going to get our best information and so that’s why I chose it um I would say for me it was twofold

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I’ve definitely had students who had dis close to me that they were either um

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autistic on the Spectrum um ADHD but for me in recent years I had come to the

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realization that I actually had ADHD and then that I was also autistic so it was

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kind of an opportunity to learn about my students and myself and that’s why I was really excited to take it fabulous yes I

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do think that there is a pool of

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professors out there who will share that experience of being late discovered and late diagnosed as awareness has

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increased and diagnostic criteria have evolved as well um so thank you so much

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for bringing in that lived experience what are um some of the challenges that

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students and perhaps The Faculty serving those students are encountering on

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campus um because because they are neurod Divergent and accessing college so I think from what I’ve seen is

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there’s there is support but the kind of support we’re getting is not um for both

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the students and faculty it’s not clear enough about what we can do what we can

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say what kind of dialogue we could be having and that um I think that is a

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huge challenge because when we get told that students need an accommodation as a

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faculty member who I understand more I want to be able to ask questions but there’s only so many things that I can

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ask without U creating some kind of discomfort for the student or her other faculty and so that’s one of the biggest

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challenges I see but I also know that there’s so many beneficial things that

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can be done in teaching to help all students and so many feel like if we

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have a student who has accommodations we have to narrow in on that one student and that’s not the case the ca that what

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it is is how do we create Better Learning opportunities even if it’s guided towards one student it can

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benefit everybody in the classroom and so trying to learn how to have the conversation but also how to incorporate

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it to assist everybody in learning in a better way yeah I’m smiling because

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Universal Design for Learning has really been a theme on this season of autism goes to college so I’m glad you’ve

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brought up uh how this can really help everybody in the classroom so something

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I’ve encountered with my students um is having students who have had bad experiences in the past I’m here to

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support you if you ever want to talk about this let me know and I just remember this one student like sending me this really long email back because

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she’s like I cannot believe that you actually are like offering to help me um another thing I’ve noticed is that

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there’s increasingly students who you know getting a diagnosis is political you have to be able to afford it you

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have to be able to risk the um you know ups and downs that might come with disclosure and so I’ve had a

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lot of students who’ve said I suspect that but I’m not sure and so I’m not able to get the accommodations and what

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I’ve had to do personally is make the decision that I was going to take those accommodations and like Dr Herson said

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expand that to everyone right so that everyone’s getting that benefit and I just tell my students like don’t worry

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about it let’s just focus on the symptoms and addressing them so I would just say there’s a lack of a full

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awareness of what this actually means and clearing up the misconception that um students aren’t putting in any less

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effort they’re probably putting in 10 times more and is about being able to help them um make that connection

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between their passion for Learning and facilitating the process so that they could have successful learning

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experience yeah um because as you say the students that are least likely to access diagnosis are our first

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generation students our students studying without documents our students of color our gender uh non-conforming

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students and so really providing that Universal support is very important for achieving educational Equity um yeah

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thank you for bringing that in what were the biggest things that you learned from during Nur from doing nuro prep as an

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educator uh for me some of the things I I partly reiterated but also knew in

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terms of the kind of the the thought process like oh I hadn’t thought about it that way but I know I I’d heard about it but how to do it better um for me it

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was that when we get a student who if they come with accommodations that we

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can know okay I need to do this or this to help them it’s still very vague and

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knowing that they’re are phrases and questions that we can ask that aren’t

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going to create a um a concern for their

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privacy or cross a boundary but in ways the questions can be more of how can I

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better support you so you’re not asking anything that’s going to make them

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hopefully not make them uncomfortable what the goal is to how can I better support you so that you can

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be a a more successful student so that was a big part for me is I can ask that question and knowing to have the right

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words to say them but also knowing that there are so many students who won’t say

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anything there’s so many who won’t reach out for assistance or are afraid to or the stigma and um that I learned it was

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really important to to incorporate Le a lesson at the early parts of the

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semester for students to discuss learning styles and that it you may or

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may not realize that the way you think you learn best it could be better in another way and that that might be a re

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there might be a reason behind that and when we can start that conversation as an open conversation then when it gets

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brought in a little bit more like oh if you’re noticing this you might want to come talk to me so that I can help uh

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support you better then those conversations can increase in a positive way and then have more of those private

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conversations of hey I’m noticing this in your learning whereas if they hadn’t ever had that conversation started they

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may never bring it up they may never say anything and so that was another part of with the course for me it was like oh I can how do I bring it in early so that

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they’re willing to have the conversation with me and then I can support them better and possibly help them in finding

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the right kind of assistance on campus so there are three things that

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stand out for me that I learned one was that um something like one in 20 of our

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students I’m not sure I could be bad on the math utilizes um these services in our

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campus so the likelihood is that someone in your classroom needs this support I think that’s the main takeaway for me

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there the second thing is um I learned really great strategies for reassuring

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my students if you can kind of understand where they’re coming from don’t just look at the behavior and I

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think that’s what happens a lot of the time especially if you think about how many people who might be faculty who

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don’t even recognize the symptoms among faculty then how are they going to treat that well against you know among

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students so being able to look at the behavior and say well what is behind that anxiety and if I can figure out

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what’s driving that and I can address it I might be able to reassure the student and say you know that’s a really valid

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concern and here’s what we can do about it and kind of give them a plan so I think Nur prep really helped with that

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and then the last thing is I definitely was more aware of the fact that I see

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both of these conditions through a combined lens so I sort of had to take it from a distance and really understand

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what is it like for someone to have just one of those conditions because I don’t [Laughter]

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know yeah um bet B’s a tricky piece because I’m I’m I’m reasonably confident

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that autism and ADHD are separate simply because I know that I only have autism and I’m different from people that have

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both um who are yet again different from people who only have ADHD exactly um and

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I don’t think that we have enough information yet to fully appreciate those subtleties but I’m relatively

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confident that they are there um so thank you for bringing those out um and

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it sounds like you’re trying these with students and getting traction have there been strategies from neuropro that

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students have particularly been responsive to and really seem to resonate with them for me the the

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biggest things that I’ve tried to be more thoughtful about um is incorporating any kind of udl and

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accessibility Concepts things that like I because I’ve been I did so much work at FDC before I was already doing a lot

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of that um but going back and reviewing everything and every class that I did to

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how do I make adjustments can I make them for an entire class do I need to do it for a lecture and see how it goes and

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ask for feedback um so that was a huge part of it um but and it has it’s worked

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really well uh students have been able to tell me that there were certain that like oh yeah that made it like much

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easier because I noticed that there were things with like the colors or the types of the way the words were written or um

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even the way that I I’m very active in class meaning I move a lot and that can

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also um make some more uncomfortable with my activity level and so knowing I

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I need to bring that down a little bit for some um my energy is very high and that also is something that sometimes I

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need to bring it down a little because there’s some that get a little bit overwhelmed at times and so I’ve learned like I need to Wrangle myself in a bit

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um and then finding ways to also consider others energy levels because a

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lot of what I like to incorporate are active engagement strategies so they’re getting up and they’re moving and

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they’re having conversations and they’re interacting and that can be fantastic and very uncomfortable depending on what

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the students needs are and so being able to have being more aware now that I need

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to make sure that I’m having the pre-con conversation of hey we’re going to be doing these things make sure you let me

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know if I need to make adjustments um and it doesn’t have to be in front of the group just come talk to me on the

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side so those are some of the bigger things that going through and talk like thinking about how can I make changes is

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partly to the lecture but also to my own behaviors in the classroom to make sure that I’m more aware to make them feel

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like they’re not getting turned off or overwhelmed by how I have high energy all the time in my class and that can be

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something that can be again great and hard for some yeah absolutely because uh

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some students really benefit from the motor activation of doing stations and other students might find the proximity

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to their peers overwhelming and need more sensory breaks on a day where that’s the activity and it’s just about

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being aware um and also developing the trust with your students where they feel able to tell you what those needs are so

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I’m wondering um what have been the challenges um with broadening the

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awareness and bringing in some of the information on access for neurodivergence students on

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campus for I I found for my classes the biggest challenge is having is taking

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the time to build the trust at the beginning before certain conversations happen in the classroom so

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I start the semester with every class trying to get them to understand understand that I’m there to support all

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of them and that’s in a variety of ways and taking every class session to

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sprinkle in Little Bits here and there to then finally get to a point where we can have more conversations about how

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their their way of being as a student learning styles and teaching styles and all that are something that it everyone

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has a benefit to the way that they learn and that I want to try to support all of that and that sometimes that’s going to

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take a little bit extra time and so for me the challenge is trying to be patient because I want to do it all at once um

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but also trying to make sure that I’m not missing something from my students

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trying to read them part of it being I one of my classes is 125 students in a

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classroom and I love that classroom but it can cause a lot of difficulties for

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both students and for um teaching situations to really be able to benefit

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the group as a whole because there’s so many all at once um so for me the the biggest with that is the challenge is

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just there’s the numbers and every semester trying to think about what that might look like and now having the neuro

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prep to really kind of go back to and zero into okay what do I need to make sure I’m thinking about what things do I

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need to talk about how can I support a large group versus the groups that are only 35 or 40 it’s a different way to

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look at a classroom and how I can support them that I mean scaling can just be very difficult um in large

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lectures plus um you know it is if a student wants to disappear um a lecture

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is a pretty good place to do it yeah oh yeah and that’s one of the activities that I found works really great with my

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students and it gives me a really good feed at the beginning of the semester they do an activity to meet it’s the

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goal is to meet 16 people in class which when you have 125 that’s a lot but I

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don’t require it I I recommend they do it to meet people but it what it does is

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it allows me to watch their behavior initially and those who don’t participate I know that those are the

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ones that I really got to be watching for how they might feel because I want the conversations to go towards things

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like discussions about the lectures and about what we’re learning and so if they’re not going to participate in something initially because it’s

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uncomfortable it’s overwhelming then they’re not going to feel comfortable moving into the content material at some

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point yeah interesting I think if I had been in your class as an undergraduate I

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probably would have been like can I skip this and maybe go to the bathroom right now and it won’t affect my grade yeah

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and I do and I have that happen sometimes try to use it as a a way for me to see uh what the students interest

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is in participation and even if they are participating kind of what is their

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behavior about the participation are they part of the activity and if the ones who like you said might kind of

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slide out for a minute and then come back I’m trying to watch all of that in that first activity to give me a better

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feed on what I can continue to move forward with and which things I need to scale and change um because those are

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things for me that are really important to incorporate to get the students to participate and discuss and connect but

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it might not make sense in every single class because of that group for that semester and also trying to find which

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activities tend to work better but also building the the comfort of the community of the class the culture of

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the community of the class um because I have had students who are like I don’t want to do any of these they come tell

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me I don’t want to I’m not okay I’m like that’s okay you don’t have to and then other ones who say like thank you for not pushing me because I found that as I

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went through the semester these are things I would have never participated in but now that you gave me the option

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to choose when to I when I added myself I got comfortable after a few sessions and finally feel like I can at least

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have a conversation with somebody next to me when usually I’d be quiet an entire semester because I didn’t feel like I could use my voice in a safe

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way yeah I think for some students the added pressure of it feeling like an obligation can be enough that they’re

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not able um to use that learning opportunity effectively Dr Preston

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Jackson with your combined lived experience as a neurodivergent professor

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and working with neurodivergent students like how are you seeing the challenges

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and the barriers and facilitators around accessibility on campus um if I can um touch on the previous a

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bit um I I think that what was happening the past couple of years is I was a traditionally extroverted person who was

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readily unmasking and having to cope and so I went from um wondering like oh why

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are my students being so shy to understanding um the issues from their perspective and what I’ve done

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increasingly is um trying to use things like mometer where people can type in and it can be anonymous so that helps a

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lot um but I was thinking I had this exercise one day and I think I wanted them to meet five people and they just

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all were like we are not doing this and I finally said it’s really okay if you just say hi my name is and they were

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like oh so I think that um to answer your second question um we have to model

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what it is we’re looking for and why and then like um Gina said offer

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Alternatives is something doesn’t work for someone because you asked a really good question about accessibility um and

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I might be going out on the limb here but I feel like a lot of the things that we’re doing in education really need to

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be questioned in terms of oh this is the way that we’ve always done it and this is what we think good pedagogy is but

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this is where our world is heading and are we preparing our students to be successful in that reality so now I’m

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having conversations with people about um if they are Training PA professionals people who are going to be going into

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professions where they would typically um have to be very gregarious we’re having conversations about how do we

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support the needs of students who are no divver for whom that would be very uncomfortable how do we help them to be successful so um I’ve had a lot of time

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to think about that with people across disciplines and um it’s been a good conversation because what I’m realizing

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is that people really do want to learn about the needs of these students and they love their students I mean a lot of

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us really do love our students absolutely so it feels like people feel a little bad

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sometimes because they say I don’t really know what to do with that and so I think there’s a real opportunity to um

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take this moment and you know because so much is Shifting think about what does it look like to realistically Empower

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everyone and um I personally try to look at things through the lens of inclusivity so I’m really interested in

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how like how do having like multiple intersective identities on top of being

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neurodivergent how would that impact learning experience so I think if we can just um kind of freeze the field of

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education and help people realize like we’re all really unique and we have unique needs so how do we reimagine what

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it looks like to take the education experience and make it something that is accessible for all universally designed

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if corre right right you know the but reimagine the entire campus right

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outside of the classro because right right yeah so think about Universal

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Design for Learning is one thing but Universal Design for living exactly and and teaching people that so

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that they can so now say okay well I’m entering this discipline this profession and I understand what my needs are and

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I’m empowered to know what to ask for so exactly and I think what we’ve learned

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today is that neuro prep can really help instructors who need some concrete tools

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uh in terms of neurodivergent inclusion in their educational Equity journey I

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would say um if it’s okay for me to say one more thing my hope is for people that take neuro prep it would be just

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like my hope for a student in a some in a class I don’t want my student to say I learned that material and now I know it

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I want them to say I got an idea of how to think with that lens and now it’s a

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part of my skill set and it’s something that I want to continue to do and apply to new things so I’m hoping that

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everyone takes this an opportunity to say here’s the beginning of the journey how can I continue this and how can I

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spread it to other people one of the things I want to um add to What Porsche was also saying because I think you’re

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absolutely right that we are we’re looking at the idea of how do we change the classroom but it’s it’s so much more

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than that and so often we’re looking for ways to get answers but that I think is

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also an issue in itself is we don’t know what we don’t know and so if we just assume oh well I can take a course and

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learn all about it that’s of course never going to be enough we need to do more but also knowing that we we need

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people to be willing to learn even if they think they already know because we

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can expand on what we understand and how we can be better at what we do but also how we can better be inclusive of others

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we can understand better we can have more informed conversations and that allows us to grow

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both our understanding for ourselves but also our understanding for our community around us

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and like we said one course is not enough but it’s a start that’s where we we have to start somewhere and this is

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fantastic because we get to start here and if we the more we can get people to and then also applying because it’s one

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thing to hear but it’s another to apply so you get to learn and then go do something with it and try it out and see

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what happens and get some feedback and so I love that we’re getting this opportunity to do that and to build upon

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the experiences from the course but also in our classroom and then hopefully build a community that we can have these

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conversations together to support each other to then also build from there yeah I mean just like we develop um mindsets

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and tools of inquiry in our methods classes this is a way to develop a tool of pedagogy um for instructors and I

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think that’s very important that it is a journey not a destination um sort of

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like we used to understand it cultural competence being a thing you have not a thing you strive for um and so I do

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think we are evolving in a good direction here we’ll now turn to the creators of the

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neuro prep program Dr yasamin Boran the director of Outreach at the Taran Center

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at UCA devoted to advancing self-determination inclusion and quality of life for people with disabilities and

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their families and Dr Sasha zik associate professor in the Department of Child and Adolescence studies at

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California State University Fullerton these two created the neuro prep program

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Welcome to our show doctors Yas and Sasha can you explain what drove you to

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create the neuro prep curriculum sure um I guess I’ll go ahead

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and start us off uh Yas and I have been working on this for nearly 10 years so

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we started um when we were in grad school actually and um we started by

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interviewing professors and students with autism students with ADHD to sort

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of understand the need s right on campuses student needs faculty needs um

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misunderstandings and things like that we did we’ve done a lot of extensive

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dives into the literature and kept up with the literature over the years to really inform the development of our of

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our program we were working very closely with our Mentor at the time Dr Jan bler

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who we continue to collaborate with um and really she and Sasha were the ones

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who started the research in this area that was the motivation for us developing um the training program um I

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jumped on a little bit later as as a as a newbie on campus um and we you know

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continued to work on on those research studies and thought you know wow there’s really a need um as per the professors

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we spoke with for a training program like this what kinds of data were you finding

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and what were the insights from Professor that were driving you to make

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this that’s a really great question I mean I mean there’s you know a lot of

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professors that just really want to understand and really want to be helpful and don’t have the knowledge or you know

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the understanding of neurodiversity to do so um and I think that’s what a lot

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of what we found but we also you know heard from the professors that we

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interviewed um a lot of stick there’s a lot of stigma that exists there’s a lot of stereotypes that people believe um we

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had professors tell us that their colleagues would question whether a student had a diagnosis because they

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didn’t appear to be you know they had an indivisible disability not a visible disability and so you know because of

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that we thought well we really do need to get this information out there so people can have a you know a much better

26:54

understanding and but we try to take a strength based approach and like you said said focus on um you know

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strategies case studies to help people really think about how to best support these students yeah so with both those

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knowledge gaps and the strength based approach in mind how did you go about designing the neuro prep

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course yeah I think a lot of what we uh formed in terms of our content was based from the literature but as well as our

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own studies but we also formed an advisory committee which was made up of

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College professors neurod Divergent students and disability support staff um

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who all contributed their you know input and experiences in developing this this

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program so we developed the content we vetted it entirely with the advisory committee they provided their feedback

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and it was sort of an iterative process where we went back and forth to make sure that we’re refining it based on

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their needs um their experiences and what they wanted people to know what they wanted professors to

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know awesome and is the target audience for neuro prep really College professors

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or is there a broader audience for this that’s a great question so our target audience when we developed the program

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was definitely faculty um however we have had a great interest

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from staff on University campuses and I’ve said hey you know go ahead take the

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course it’s you know I think it’s applicable and I have gotten feedback and you know we’ve taken some data from

28:34

staff who’ve taken the training who have found it to be very helpful and one of our goals I think eventually is also to

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either create some additional modules or to make some adaptations for staff

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specifically yeah that makes a ton of sense thinking about areas where I personally struggled as an autistic

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undergraduate the athletics department residential life and dining really could have used this information what kind of

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feedback have you gotten on neuro prep from course participants most of the feedback has

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been largely positive we’re thankful for that um and it it is in large part

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because of the input that we’ve received from our advisory committee a lot of the changes that we made are things that people have directly commented on so a

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lot of the neurodiversity affirming practices that we talk about the strategies that we share those are the things that we often get feedback that

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you know is really appreciated um we as mentioned I’ve heard from a lot of um staff um a lot of

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um people kind of outside of the the direct audience of faculty and professors who really want more in a

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sense so we just need to carve out some time to to develop that um develop the additional

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content so is there a neuro prep 2.0 or an expanded um director’s cut of neuro

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prep in the works I would say yes yes we we are

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seeking funding for this 2.0 we’re we’re analyzing data from a pilot study now um

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we’re presenting that at the international Society for autism research this um in a couple months and

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then um after that I think we’ll sit down and think about what the next steps are and what 2.0 would look like I’m

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looking forward to seeing you there then I’ll be presenting some some data at insar as well thank you both so much for

30:31

being here and for sharing about neuro prip and the story that went into its

30:36

creation thank you thanks for having us