Journal #7- Guest Speaker Dr. Robyn Hudson- Services for Students with Disabilities

Pre-Questions for Dr. Hudson:
1. What is the most common disability your office works with?
2. How often is a student denied services for their disability?
3. Does Virginia Tech consider ESL to be a disbility?

 Dr. Robyn Hudson is the assistant director of the Services for Students with Disabilities Office. Dr. Hudson has been with our university for the past 10 years and previously worked at Radford in their student services office. In college, she studied mental health and went on to get her doctorate in education.

The Services for Students with Disabilities Office has to accommodate a number of different types of disabilities here at Virginia Tech. The most common disability being ADHD, followed by learning disabilities. Other disabilities include psychiatric, medical, mobile, vision, deaf and hard of hearing, traumatic brain injuries, pervasive developmental disabilities, and temporary disabilities. Her office helps each student present with one of these disabilities and makes sure that the appropriate accommodations are set up for them.

To help explain the accommodations made for each student, Dr. Hudson gave us an analogy comparing something that was equal to something equitable. She said to imagine that people are competing in a race, but in order for it to be considered "equal" each person would be given size 5 tennis shoes. Although that was something that would make everyone equal, it was not something that could be seen as equitable because not every competitor wore a size 5 tennis shoe so that would be giving the ones who did an unfair advantage. Dr. Hudson explained how this analogy could be compared to a person with disabilities in a school setting, and how her office is there to help make sure everyone has an equitable learning experience here.

One thing that surprised me was that ESL was not considered a disability here at Virginia Tech. Dr. Hudson said that ESL students all had to pass a language/literacy test before becoming accepted here, and that it was the Cranwell International Office that would aide those students with "English as a Second Language" classes and help them assimilate into our school and American Culture.