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DO-IT CAREERS Blends Degree Program With Proven SkillsBy: Nan Hawthorne
Summary:
The DO-IT CAREERS Program at the University of Washington may be on the edge of a new trend in learning as it seeks to blend a college degree with proven skills for students with disabilities. I talked to Sara Lopez about the DO-IT CAREERS Program. 
How the Learning Landscape Is Changing
The University of Washington's DO-IT Program Creating a Level Playing Field for Disabled Job Seekers Related Links Related Content How the Learning Landscape Is Changing During (and after) the 1960s, a bachelor's degree in a field was the base line for any hope of a good-paying job. Schools such as Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich., even began to build "liberal arts" degrees in trades like auto body repair. As the years past, some academic vocations, such as teaching, raised the stakes to require more advanced degrees. It was beginning to get harder, longer and more costly to get a decent job. But the advent and quick expansion of high technology jobs in the past 10 to 15 years may result in a new approach to determining whether a job candidate is qualified for a position. A bachelor's degree in computer science is slowly giving way to certification and experience as the groundwork. As Kelly Pierce writes in "eSight Trend Watch: New Landscape for Learning" right here on eSight Careers Network, "Employers are seeking employees with performance-based abilities instead of degrees. If the technology industry is any indication of the trend, certification provides an entry point -- regardless of whether you have a college degree or a high school diploma." Similarly, a proven track record is becoming an invaluable chip to bring to the job bargaining table. This is doubly true for blind and partially sighted individuals who not only have to prove they know the work but also that they are capable of doing computer-related work at all. Developing that track record can be a Catch-22. You need experience to get a job, but you need a job to gain experience. Often gaining that experience through volunteering and internships is the only solution. The DO-IT (which stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology) Program at the University of Washington exists to help students with disabilities succeed in college and make the transition into rewarding careers in technology. One afternoon last fall I sat down at a local Starbuck's for coffee and a chat with Sara Lopez, Project Coordinator for DO-IT CAREERS. Go to Top of Page The University of Washington's DO-IT Program Known for the DO-IT Scholars program, the DO-IT Program on the campus of the stately University of Washington in Seattle seeks to provide a bridge between academics and careers in technology with the young disabled people who are building career plans in that industry. DO-IT Scholars "enables high school students with disabilities to explore careers and to gain the prerequisite knowledge needed for success in college and employment." Besides providing help to prepare for and get admitted to college (in terms of survival skills), the Scholars are involved in team projects that start them on the path to the experiential "classroom" of today's new learning landscape.
Among the materials DO-IT provides for employers is its video, "Finding Gold: Hiring the Best and the Brightest," which shows competent, confident and successful disabled professionals at work and dispels many of the mistaken notions people may have about them. The video is available via the DO-IT CAREERS web site (See Related Links. For students, DO-IT CAREERS offers general career development training such as how to make academic choices to support a given career as well as skills and tools for finding the right job. It also provides other opportunities for how to approach life with a disability, reflecting its awareness of the ancillary challenges faced by its intelligent and capable college students. "It is difficult for talented young people with disabilities to succeed, or even imagine success, in higher education and employment," Lopez explains. "Obstacles include lack of adequate support systems; little access to successful role models; lack of access to technology that can increase independence and productivity; and, most significantly, low expectations on the part of the people with whom they interact. These barriers result in fewer capable high school students with disabilities attending colleges and universities and subsequently entering professional employment. To overcome these barriers, there is a need for transition support for individuals who are intellectually capable of handling post-secondary education and/or employment yet who encounter difficulties because of their disabilities." To this end, DO-IT CAREERS offers "practice" with campus living and student life. Disabled mentors help to direct students' paths around known obstacles, acquaint students with assistive technology and support their efforts to build independence and a life of meaningful and rewarding work. The learning landscape's evolution is clear in this program. Simply learning about a subject is not enough for the students. The program's added value is in experiential education, and that's central to the program. Even practicing careers in an academic setting pales in comparison to real world career experience, which the students gain from their mentors who work in that real world, opportunities to observe (job shadow) those mentors at work and hands-on experience with the tools of work. Go to Top of Page Creating a Level Playing Field for Disabled Job Seekers DO-IT CAREERS takes the experience one step further by developing internships and other on-the-job experiences within the student's chosen industry. Particularly in careers involving computer and computer-related technology, this opportunity to prove oneself is worth as much or more than any other part of a disabled student's preparation for a career. You can purchase two excellent videos, "It's Your Career" for college students and "Learn and Earn" for high school students, for $25 each on the DO-IT web site. They focus on work-based learning. Students with a variety of disabilities talk about their work and how they accommodate their disabilities. They describe how their internships and volunteer opportunities have given them the environment in which to practice what they learned in school and learn what cannot be taught any other way but by experiencing it on the job. One DO-IT CAREERS alumnus is featured in eSight Careers Network's "Making Blindness Irrelevant Through Accommodations To Effectively Serve Customers" Randy Hammer, totally blind from childhood, gained an internship at Weyerhaeuser Corporation through DO-IT CAREERS. He now works as an expert in Client Services for CIS at Illuminet, a high-tech company in Olympia, Wash. His internship helped him land work at Weyerhaeuser and later at Illumonet because it helped him develop the teamwork and other work skills that made him the best candidate and introduced him to Curtis Bryan, who hired him when Bryan moved to Illuminet. Lopez and other staff members at DO-IT CAREERS put into practice what they know to be true about disabled people and work experience. She told us, "One problem disabled students have is that, no matter how well-educated they are or how many degrees they have, they often simply do not have anything to put in the 'work experience' section of a resume." She explains, "While other students are getting after-school and summer jobs, disabled students are coping with the barriers that make studying take longer. And most part-time and summer work just is not available to them." DO-IT CAREERS facilitates the work-based learning opportunities both to better prepare the students for careers and to assist them by showing potential employers that not only can they do the work -- they already have. Go to Top of Page Bookmark this article to: 
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