Jenna Colorusso is a senior Communication Disorders major and is currently the undergraduate assistant for the program. She has been apart of the MAICEI Program since her sophomore year and in addition to creating this newsletter, she has been a peer mentor and undergraduate intern. Before graduating, we asked her about some of her experiences with the program and how they shaped her.
Hi Jenna, you have been uniquely connected with UMass MAICEI through your experience and roles you have had. Tell us about yourself and your background (major/family influence) and how these contributed to your interest in being a part of MAICEI?
I am currently a Communications Disorders major here at UMass. I originally got into the major because personal experience and my own family’s values. As a child I received speech therapy services for nearly a decade of my life, and I always had fond memories of it. In my own family, disability and disability rights were something that was talked about openly. My mother works for Early Intervention and through that and her own work attending many IEP meetings for my sister and I, she learned a lot about educational and disability laws and often about it. Having these open and honest conversations about disability got me interested in the field. I guess those conversations also stuck with my sister since she is also currently in graduate school pursuing her masters in Speech-Language Pathology. My mom is a powerhouse of woman who has never lost her passion for the work she does. I’ve always been inspired by it. I’d like to think if I ever became half as good as she is at her job then I too could make a difference.
I first heard about MAICEI through a posting listed in my major’s newsletter looking to gain more peer mentors. Although I knew a lot about services in public schools, I didn’t even know that programs like MAICEI existed at the college level. On a phone call with my mother a couple of days later, I mentioned it to her and asked if she had heard of it. She replied that she had, thought it was a good initiative, and even attended a conference in which one of the founders of MAICEI program spoke. With the “Mom Seal of Approval” I thought I would apply to be a peer mentor just to try it out.
Could you explain the roles you have had with MAICEI and share your insights you have developed about the role of inclusion at the collegiate level through your experience in each role and collectively?
I first got involved with MAICEI with peer mentor program in the fall of my sophomore year. Through this experience I got to see the social aspects of inclusion on a college campus. I was matched with a MAICEI student and we began to meet up in between our classes. It took us both some time to figure out a routine and how to effectively communicate with each other. Eventually we got the hang of it and we would often met up in the library café to talk, doodle or occasionally to play basketball at the Rec Center. With time, I learned at inclusion, although important, was not something overtly special. What my mentor and I did was just a normal catch-up with a friend on campus; grabbing a coffee, asking about what our weekends were like and either raving or complaining about classes. To me, that’s what I learned to be authentic inclusion. It is not something that is meant to be glorified, but something meant to be “normal”.
When I became the undergraduate intern for the program in the fall of my junior year, I got a crash course in all the work that MAICEI does to behind the scenes. I can tell you that the program has accessibility and inclusion as it’s center focus. Due to this, I learned how to think on my feet quickly when problems arose or if I was given tasks if a student needed support. Since I was a fellow college student, a lot of my time was dedicated to conducting research about resources on campus that students would realistically use and try to make the information accessible. Say if a student needed extra support with an academic class, I would have to go search for a resource that I would imagine I would realistically use. Once finding something, you had to ask yourself does resource fit the specific need? Is it accessible during the time the student is on campus? Is it accessible mobility-wise or close to where the student normally is? What do other students really think about this resource?
You could do all of this research and then present it to whomever, but it could still not work for the student. At first, I was confused because I had thought inclusion from my peer mentor experience was treating everyone the same and making the space for them. Approaching from an angle of “I’m a college student, their a college student, what would I search for if I was in their position” didn’t work because I learned for something to be inclusive, it needs to be individualized. If it isn’t, then it still fails to be inclusive. If what I tried didn’t fit the need, you had to just accept it, scrap it, and move on. Inclusion requires you to not only think about the need but also the individual which takes some fast creative thinking.
As the undergraduate assistant currently, I am primarily working on the newsletter. This year, we decided to focus on the idea of students taking initiative and documenting those processes. To help with this, I interviewed students as well as those who have helped support them in their journeys. I learned that inclusion “takes a village” so to speak. I like to think of it like a car. The student’s dedication to their work puts them in the drivers seat but then all of the people who they come in contact with on campus make up different parts of the car and have specific functions to help the car run. The people who have helped me make this newsletter, whether they are know it or not, are working in tangent with so many others. It’s a privilege to be able to see this picture all laid out.
When you think of UMass MAICEI, what are some words or phrases you would use to describe it and its impact?
True and seamless inclusion for our program means that you don’t even know it’s going on at all.
Did you ever have fear or anxiety with your own abilities to connect with the MAICEI students for whom you worked directly? How did you know you were building a positive rapport as a Peer Mentor? How did you benefit from this relationship as a Peer Mentor?
I wouldn’t say I felt any fear from doing peer mentoring but I think I definitely felt anxiety at first. At first, I think we both were anxious because it was difficult to understand each other’s communication styles. As I mentioned before, peer mentoring taught me that authentic inclusion isn’t meant to be glorified or wildly different and I think I walked into peer mentoring having a vague understanding of that. We tried meeting up at a café to talk which was what I thought was appropriate because that’s how I saw everyone else meet up with friends. But it just wasn’t working.
One day I printed a few coloring sheets of things I knew my mentee liked because he had seen my box of colored pencils I had for my anatomy class and mentioned he liked art. It turned out to be a game changer. Coloring became the vehicle for more open and honest conversations. He began to talk to me more because I think he felt less anxiety by having something to do and he had asked me to work on the picture with him. After a few times of doing it, it became our routine. We met in the library and we would go to the basement to print new coloring sheets and then head upstairs to the café to sit down. We would have our conversations about what most students talk about such as our classes, our weekends, and how our friends and family were doing but we would just pass back and forth coloring sheet while we did it. It was a conversational style I was used to but with an activity my mentee felt comfortable with. We definitely did over a hundred sheets in our time together, each one done half be me and half by him and I think that’s symbolic of a key part of inclusion. You have to meet people halfway sometimes. Everyone’s version of inclusion is going to look different because people are different. I actually still have all of those coloring sheets, I couldn’t bear to recycle them. So the short answer to your question is yes, I did benefit with my relationship with my mentee because I gained a friend.
How has MAICEI shaped your thoughts with regard to the impact to access Higher Education for people with Intellectual Disabilities? Do you think these beliefs around inclusion will carry with you for how you approach your personal and professional life? In other words, how have the combination of your UMass education and MAICEI experiences prepared you for your career goals?
As I said, before hearing about the MAICEI Program through the peer mentor flyer my sophomore year I didn’t know programs like this existed. I knew students were eligible to stay within the public school system up until their 22nd birthday so that’s what I thought happened. My time with both the MAICEI Program and UMass has dramatically changed how I view access to higher education. Through the Developmental Disabilities and Human Services program (DDHS), I took a class called Psych 480 Intellectual Disability: Concepts & Controversies where different aspects intellectual disability was examined throughout the life span. In this course, I learned how the three points of the MAICEI Program; academic, social and vocational were critical throughout someone’s entire life. Working with the MAICEI Program showed me how all three of these can easily be developed in the college setting. I’ve heard UMass described by one parent as “a little city of young people” which I thought was very fitting and UMass MAICEI takes full advantage of this. They see all that UMass offers as endless opportunities that can be adapted to support academic learning, social support and career development. I think the skill of being able to see opportunity in something most of us take for granted, like a college campus, and think critically about can support people through inclusion and accessibility is something that I’ll have with me for the rest of my career.
Going into the Communications Disorders Program, I wanted to be an elementary school Speech and Language Pathologist. Now, after everything I’ve seen through my courses in CommDis, Education, and DDHS combined with my time with the MAICEI Program, I’m not so sure that would be enough for me. All of those programs have made me fall in love with Universal Design for Learning, Speech Pathology and accessibility. If I could find something that includes all of those, I think I would be happy.
I plan to obtain a Speech and Language Pathologist Assistant’s license to see if there is a way I can find a way to satisfy all my interests before going to graduate school to get my master’s in Speech and Language Pathology. Although it might seem like I have a few to many interests now, I am endlessly thankful for UMass and the MAICEI Program for giving me the opportunity to learn from them.
-Jenna Colorusso
