Students with disabilities face plenty of challenges during co-op terms or internship summers, from leaving their families and friends to making their environments barrier-free. But many companies and government agencies are ready to welcome the students and accommodate their special needs. Employers do this because they recognize the assets a talented person – with or without a disability – brings to the workplace.

The first challenges students face when looking for jobs may be at their own schools, say several corporate recruiters. Often, a communications gap exists between the offices that support students with disabilities and the schools’ career services offices. The disability offices generally give students with disabilities the assistive technology or helpers they need to do their course work. But career services may not realize that disabled students need extra preparation for the work world.

Virginia Stern.

Entry Point! at AAAS
That’s why internships and co-ops are critical for students with disabilities, says Virginia Stern, who directs the Project on Science, Technology and Disability and Entry Point! for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, Washington, DC). Entry Point! (www.entrypoint.org), started in 1996, links disabled science and technology students with internships.

Those links are in the companies’ best interest, Stern says. Although hiring is down across the U.S., “Companies still want graduates with the latest technology experience. By the nature of their disabilities, our students understand teamwork, think outside the box and are good problem solvers.”

Entry Point! students have disabilities that range from impaired hearing and vision to mobility issues to chronic illness and emotional disorders. Stern estimates that sixty-five percent of employers don’t know the students’ specific disabilities until after they’re hired.

Entry Point! is very successful: ninety-two percent of its student participants are either hired full time after graduation by their employers or go on to graduate school. Entry Point! talks with employers about students’ needs and helps solve housing and transportation problems. “AAAS employers always seem to get the technology the students need. If they did not, it would reflect badly on their own technological capabilities,” Stern says.

Although many students need no accommodations, the Entry Point! alumni network can be helpful when they do, says Stern. “An employer may not know what bus route works for someone who doesn’t drive, because they’ve never had to take a bus. But generally someone within our network will know.”

NASA emphasizes ACCESS
NASA (www.nasa.gov, Washington, DC) began reaching out to talented students with disabilities in 1989 by working with Gallaudet University (Washington, DC). That program was replaced in 1996 by “Achieving Competence in Computing, Engineering, and Space Science” (ACCESS), an internship program now managed for NASA by the AAAS through Entry Point!. Since then, NASA has placed 127 ACCESS interns with a variety of disabilities. They work in thirty disciplines, most of them technical.

ACCESS is only one pipeline to NASA for students with disabilities. Many work in NASA’s other internship and co-op programs. Says Michael Hartman, disability program manager at Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD), “Our programs are fully integrated, and accommodations are made regardless of hiring source.” Sometimes, he admits, extraordinary measures are necessary – but the need for assistive technology or other accommodations is never a barrier to hiring. Neither is finding accessible housing: NASA works with colleges, universities and other apartment providers.

NASA benefits from its relationship with AAAS and ACCESS. “We get good quality students,” says Hartman. And, he says, the students educate managers and supervisors about hiring students with disabilities.

Students and fellow workers benefit from the contact, says Stern. “Whatever stereotype existed before is going to change. If a group of interns goes to a baseball game and some students have access problems, everyone in the program will have their awareness raised very fast.”

Recruiters point out that it’s not always easy to identify students who have disabilities, especially if they are mainstreamed as most technology students are. Companies committed to hiring students with disabilities usually reach out by advertising in specialized publications, working with on-campus placement specialists and getting personal referrals.

Mylene Padolina.

Microsoft seeks out employees with disabilities
At Microsoft (Redmond, WA), products include hardware and software for the disabled community. The company wants to hire employees with disabilities, and relies on organizations such as the Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities consortium (COSD, www.cosdonline.org) to find disabled candidates, says Mylene Padolina, senior diversity consultant. In addition, Microsoft works with schools that have many students with disabilities and trains its campus recruiters to relate more effectively to them.

Padolina says Microsoft is committed to helping student employees do their best work and is willing to make the necessary investments.

“A diverse workplace helps us attract and keep the most qualified employees and better serve a wide range of customers, including those with disabilities,” Padolina says. “People from the various disability-related communities provide a valuable perspective on how we develop and market products and services, and how we deal with customer satisfaction. We benefit in terms of innovation from having these views in our workforce.”

For interns who are deaf, Microsoft provides American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, pagers and TTY telephone devices. The company also holds deaf awareness classes and ASL training for work groups with deaf interns. For blind interns, the company provides screen reading software, documents in alternative formats, orientation/mobility specialists and blindness awareness training for co-workers.

Mandy Oei of Microsoft: impressed with accommodations
Mandy Oei, who is profoundly deaf, was impressed by Microsoft as a potential employer during her internship application process. After a telephone interview via relay service, Oei flew north from her California campus to meet with recruiters.

“I was provided a team of two interpreters, which impressed me because I sometimes encounter difficulties when explaining my needs,” she says. “Everyone who interviewed me took my deafness in stride. The ease of getting accommodations and employee attitudes were a major factor in accepting the internship offer. I was placed in a group that had an employee familiar with ASL.”

Oei, who earned her BA in English from Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) in 2001, spent that summer as an intern with a user assistance group and was hired as a full-time Microsoft technical writer in the fall. She now works in the platform builder documentation group.

Her job search, Oei says, was done primarily on line. She also used accommodations provided by Stanford, like TTYs, interpreters and note takers. For the campus job fair, Stanford provided an interpreter to accompany her.

At Microsoft, Oei uses interpreters during team meetings and conferences. Other accommodations like TTY, e-mail and instant messaging help with her office needs. She meets regularly with a group to practice her ASL skills. She praises Microsoft for hiring a consultant to train her co-workers on how to interact with a deaf person.

On the job, Oei says, there’s “never a dull moment.” She enjoys working for a company that builds accessibility options into its products.

Dick McElroy.

RIT/NTID: providing productive interns
The Rochester Institute of Technology is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). Several companies work closely with the institute.

Xerox Corp (Rochester, NY) has a strong relationship with NTID and has hired several NTID students. Todd Stout, North American recruiting manager, says his challenge is “finding the right students, period. We want to make sure we have opportunities that match their career interests.”

Given the nature of Xerox’s business, says Stout, ninety-five percent of the interns and co-ops work in technical positions, using CS, EE or ME skills. Physical limitations are not barriers to employment, says Stout, and students with special needs “haven’t presented that many challenges.”

Xerox houses most of its summer interns in one location, making transportation less of an issue for those needing assistance, Stout notes. “We’re very sensitive to that.”

Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY) also has a close relationship with RIT/NTID. Last year NTID student employees helped restore photos sifted from the remains of the World Trade Center. Says Dick McElroy, the team leader who supervised their hiring, “It was a learning situation for all. The hearing-impaired students are very productive. They have the skills we need. They are no different from other RIT students.”

Because none of the students hired was totally deaf, McElroy says, they needed minimal accommodations. He installed TTYs and white boards to make written communication easier. But the primary communication method was already in place: e-mail.

“We didn’t need extraordinary measures,” says McElroy. “Perhaps in the future some necessary accommodations will be more of a challenge, but we’ll deal with that. If, for example, signing should be necessary we’ve already indicated our interest in learning.” Currently, an NTID student is working on a CAD-based project with a mechanical engineer on McElroy’s team.

RIT/NTID grad Sara Bianco Riggio is now a deaf-services coordinator in Illinois.

Sara Bianco Riggio: balancing hearing and deaf worlds at RIT
Sara Bianco Riggio, who is deaf, majored in communications at NTID. Although she and her husband returned to the Chicago area before graduation, she completed her BS in professional and technical communications from RIT online this spring.

Bianco Riggio chose RIT because of the support it gives deaf students and its excellent reputation for co-op employment. She also chose it, she says, because it “offered the perfect balance between the hearing and deaf worlds.”

Currently employed full time as deaf services coordinator at the DuPage Center for Independent Living (Glen Ellyn, IL), Bianco Riggio held various jobs during school working with others who are deaf. In Rochester she was also a peer educator and an ASL instructor.

A member of a deaf family, she learned ASL and received speech therapy very early. She attended classes primarily with other deaf students before being mainstreamed in junior high school. In school she used Signed Exact English, and attended a German high school for the deaf as an American Field Service exchange student.

Bianco Riggio requires no special accommodations because her workplace serves the deaf community. Her supervisor signs, and she can “speech read” most of her co-workers. She uses a TTY and has access to sign language interpreters for meetings when she needs them. She uses a computer for interoffice e-mail and instant messaging. “That’s becoming the preferred contact method of deaf and hard-of-hearing people,” she comments.

Accommodations? No problem!
At Procter & Gamble (Cincinnati, OH), senior recruiting specialist Kevin Brady says the cost of special equipment required by disabled hires is minimal, “and is more than offset by the value of a diverse workforce.”

Meghan Mariman.

Like P&G, Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, MD) looks for qualified candidates first and deals with their disabilities later. “We have the facilities necessary to accommodate students with disabilities, whether it be translators, ramps or elevators,” says spokesperson Meghan Mariman.

Craig Peterson.

H&R Block (Kansas City, KS) has no formal internship or co-op program, but job opportunities exist in the company’s service center, which hires 600 to 800 technical support people each year. “Employees with hearing and visual impairments are easy to accommodate,” says employment manager Craig Peterson. Much of H&R Block’s hiring is spread across the company’s tax centers nationwide.

JP Morgan Chase (New York, NY) is an Entry Point! corporate partner. “We think there are many qualified students who happen to be disabled,” says Ivy Tsui, assistant VP of university relations. “It’s simply another resource for us.” Chase hires CS and computer engineering students for its application delivery program.

Tsui says the three interns with disabilities hired in the summer of 2002 worked out well. “No special accommodations were needed,” she says. After telephone interviews, the students came to headquarters to meet with trained recruiters knowledgeable about the Americans with Disabilities Act, something Tsui believes all employees should know. As with any intern position, a spot here is regarded as a lead-in to full-time employment for students who perform well.

Micheline Carter.

TI: disabled students in the pipeline
Texas Instruments (TI, Dallas, TX), an Entry Point! partner, “finds ways to build pipelines to the disabled,” says Micheline Carter, manager of university programs. Students with disabilities, especially engineering majors, have worked in both summer internships and co-op jobs. TI helps with relocation and special needs like interpreters.

Students who become full-time employees may be offered scholarships for graduate school. “Whether students stay here or work for a competitor, our program ultimately works for us,” says Carter. Over the last five years, eighty-six percent of TI student workers took full-time jobs; in 2002 the rate was ninety-one percent.

“A lot of disabled students want to know if other people in the workplace are disabled,” says Carter. “We like to hook them up with a mentor who can relate to both their disability and their job function.”

Intern Michele Emmi’s manager at Texas Instruments helped her select courses.

Michele Emmi: a TI internship leads to opportunities
At thirty-seven, Michele Emmi has almost completed her bachelors in IT – a new degree program – at SUNY Cobleskill (Cobleskill, NY) with an emphasis on Web development and management. She commutes to school from her home in Binghamton, NY, juggling work for Texas Instruments, childcare and studies.

Emmi has a hearing loss that makes it impossible to hear voices in lower ranges. It is especially hard to understand male teachers. “I make sure I’m in the front of the classroom, and my instructor knows about my problem,” she says. “I’ve benefited from small classes.” At Broome Community College (Binghamton, NY), where she first studied liberal arts, note takers were a great help.

Emmi migrated into technology after selling computers, a job made difficult by not always being able to hear her customers. “When my daughter was born, I taught myself about Web pages,” she says. She returned to work as a Web developer. Through Entry Point!, she landed a summer internship with Texas Instruments in Dallas during 2001. “I can’t say enough about the opportunities Entry Point! afforded me,” she says. “I went on their website, saw a story about someone like me and in ten minutes I was enrolled.”

Her first assignment at TI was to develop content for an intranet site. Her biggest challenge during the summer internship, she says, was adjusting to TI’s corporate culture and regional accents. When she returned to Binghamton, she worked half time, and then became a full-time hourly telecommuter for the company, learning even more about programming and Java.

Her TI manager has helped Emmi select courses and prepare her individual development plan. “The value of my TI exposure has been tremendous,” she says.

IBM is committed to an inclusive workplace
IBM (White Plains, NY) assigns executives as on-campus recruiters of the disabled at RIT/NTID, University of Minnesota, New Mexico State, University of Illinois and Washington University. The company is a founding Entry Point! partner. To IBM, hiring students with disabilities is just one component of an inclusive workplace, says Millie DesBiens, workforce diversity program manager.

The company trains and certifies its recruiters using modules geared to the disabled population and has a history of hiring and promoting former Entry Point! interns. Although the company doesn’t track the percentage of disabled co-op and intern students, seven percent of IBM’s full-time technical workforce has a disability. When hiring students, the company generally looks for junior-year CS, EE and math majors.

IBM looks at each of its more than 300 workplaces to make sure that no employee has accessibility issues after being hired. A team evaluates each worker’s needs and provides the appropriate technology. This service is available for both intern/co-op students and full-time hires. “We want people to land here ready to go,” says DesBiens.

Government leads the way with WRP
The federal government recruits students with disabilities through its Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy and the U.S. Department of Defense. Begun in 1975, WRP expanded to include some private sector employers in 1996.

WRP’s structure makes it an ideal program, say hiring managers at client agencies. Fifty-five federal recruiters prescreen students, who must apply for the program through their colleges. Resumes are posted on a CD-ROM and sent to participating agencies and companies.

Many agencies are enthusiastic about the WRP, says Paul Meyer, the program director. When the secretary or undersecretary of an agency buys into the program, the number of interns hired can increase dramatically. Some agency reps sit on the WRP steering committee; they help sell the program to their HR departments and hiring managers. Meyer is encouraged that bureaus like the Federal Aeronautics Administration, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Farm Credit Union are participating.

A recent survey of last summer’s WRP interns and managers found the program very satisfactory to both, says Meyer. The number of interns hired increases every year (362 of 1,800 applicants last year; up from 359 of 1,300 the year before), but Meyer says hiring is slow when money is tight and the government is involved in a war. Meyer describes WRP as a “foot-in-the-door program”; students can usually sell themselves once given the chance.

Computer science is a hot major when it comes to landing a job, Meyer says. In the summer of 2002, only twenty percent of the engineering students in the WRP database found jobs, compared with forty percent of the CS students.

Web work at DVA
The Department of Veterans Affairs hires only a few WRP interns, but the experience has been good for managers and students, says Noemi Pizarro-Hyman, the national DVA program manager for people with disabilities.

“Our experience with disabled students has been no different than our experience with students from other minority groups,” she says. “We tell the selecting officer to concentrate on students’ abilities, not their disabilities.”

James Lucas, who qualifies as disabled because of a severe case of Crohn’s Disease, says his experience working as an intern on the department’s website, which he’s been doing since 2001, has been positive. Before starting the job, he told his supervisor how his disease might affect his work. “Some days I feel good, and on others I can’t function,” he says. “If you don’t explain your situation up front, some people might think you aren’t performing your job as you should.”

More opportunities in government work
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.) hired thirty-two WRP interns with disabilities in 2002, fifteen in Washington, DC and the balance nationwide. More than a dozen were minorities. Tech students mostly work in computer technology, IT, Web design, science and engineering.

WRP students worked last summer in the U.S. Mint’s IT area and the office of management services. “We hope to hire more disabled students in the Treasury Department,” says Jaime Mikulas, director of diversity in the Mint’s human resources office. “In the past we hired mostly high school students. Now, we want to move more into college.”

Mathew Barnett uses coping techniques to succeed at the U.S. Forest Service.

Mathew Barnett of the U.S. Forest Service: coping skills lead to success
Mathew Barnett discovered he had attention deficit disorder (ADD) while studying math at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA). Despite the challenges presented by the condition, he earned his BSCE from Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA) in 2002. He had previously earned an associates degree in engineering from Tidewater Community College (Portsmouth, VA) in 1999.

His sister researched ADD, and helped Barnett enroll in WRP. Barnett’s campus interview was in late 1999. In the spring of 2000, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Norfolk, VA) hired him for clerical work. When the Forest Service offered him a hands-on engineering job, he spent two months surveying and designing roads and parking lots in Superior National Forest (Ely, MN).

In the summer of 2001, Barnett took a similar job in the Wallowa-Whitman Forest (Enterprise, OR). Then a chance trip to Bend, OR led to his current job as a facilities engineer in Deschutes National Forest. Working in the outdoors suits him: “There are fewer distractions, and it’s more relaxing.”

Barnett is grateful for the support he received at Old Dominion from both the disabilities office staff and faculty members who adjusted the timing of his tests.

ADD requires no accommodations from his employer. However, to work successfully, Barnett has had to learn special coping techniques such as writing detailed notes and keeping a regular schedule. Credit goes to WRP, he says. “Because of WRP, I am way ahead of where I would have been.”

CIA aims to reflect the nation in hiring
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, Washington, DC) recruits its own candidates from website applicants and campus interviews rather than tapping into the WRP database. Says Harold Tate, deputy chief, CIA recruiting center, “We’re not hiring against a goal or a target, but we want the agency to reflect the nation. Generally, we don’t know if someone is disabled until they identify themselves as such. It’s voluntary on the part of the applicant.”

Says Joanne Callahan, a diversity recruiting officer who has worked for the CIA for twenty-four years, “I’m very proud of the CIA because the agency included the disabled long before it became politically correct to do so,” she says. Callahan, who is blind, travels to work with her guide dog, Scully, and is assisted by readers.

Using assistive technology in the CIA can be challenging, says Elizabeth Anthony, chief of the agency’s reasonable accommodations staff. “We’ve had to be creative,” she says, “The biggest hurdle is implementing internal computer technology because of the many security measures we have in place. Our security and IT officers have been very skillful at screening products and getting them onto people’s desktops. Whatever the customer needs, we find it, whether it’s left-handed weaponry and holsters, or screen readers and sign language interpreters.”

The CIA also gives its workers lessons in etiquette. “For example, we’ve instructed people that when speaking to someone in a wheelchair, it’s entirely appropriate to sit down in an adjacent chair but not to touch the wheelchair,” says Anthony.

The CIA hires interns for almost all engineering and IT disciplines. Its Stokes Scholar program gives scholarships to some students for their undergraduate years. Roughly eighty percent of the students become full-time employees. While face-to-face interviews are a required part of the application process, the CIA usually goes to the applicant, says Tate.

The bottom line is the same for students with and without disabilities: “The company will judge a person by productivity and team personality,” says AAAS’ Virginia Stern. “This is a good thing. We don’t want to segregate our students.”

Not every disabled student finds the perfect job, the right living situation or a supportive group. But recruiters at every company contacted for this story were confident that students could find success in their co-op and intern programs.

D/C

– Lisa Furlong is a freelance writer and editor in Center Harbor, NH.