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Services for Students With Disabilities

General Information

SMU's Coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities is the primary contact for all students with disabilities, including physical disabilities, learning disabilities, eating disorders, and others. The Coordinator helps students with disabilities utilize resources they may need and helps them work with professors and staff in obtaining appropriate and reasonable accommodations.

Students with disabilities should be aware that, although they may have included information about their disability issues in their application materials, SMU Admissions is required by law to keep this information confidential. Therefore, this information is not shared with other offices of the University, including the Coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities. For this reason, it is important that the students contact the Coordinator's office directly.

It is recommended that students with disabilities contact the Coordinator's office immediately after reaching campus to get acquainted and to file the necessary documentation. This step is required before accommodations can be arranged. Some students are reluctant to acknowledge disability issues or consider being tested to determine if they have such issues, because they feel that they should be fully independent and not ask for any accommodations. The University applauds this determination to be independent but strongly advises students to contact the Coordinator's office so that if a need for accommodation does arise, the process of arranging it can be handled more efficiently. Great care is taken to maintain confidentiality in regard to students' personal information.

The Coordinator is Rebecca Marin.

Office location: Memorial Health Center Room 220	Mailing Address: PO Box 195 Dallas, TX 75275-0195
Ph. 214-768-4557	Fax. 214-768-1255
	E-mail: rmarin@smu.edu

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Establishing Eligibility & General Guidelines for Documentation

The mission of the office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) is to support the educational, career, social and recreational choices of SMU students with disabilities through coordination of services and reasonable accommodations, consultation and advocacy. In order to receive academic accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, students with disabilities must register with the SSD office. Academic accommodations are provided to students whose documentation provides evidence of a substantially limiting disability as defined by the federal legislation noted above. The University must receive appropriate medical and/or psychological documentation in order to provide academic accommodations. Such documentation is required where the disability or appropriate accommodations are not readily apparent. In exceptional cases, a recent and continuous record of accommodations at the student's last educational setting may be accepted as documentation.

Students who would like to be considered for services through this office must:

1) Request services themselves, by letter, email or phone. In their requests, students should indicate what kinds of assistance they think they may need, and provide information on how to be contacted after the documentation is reviewed. Documentation will not be reviewed without the student's request.

2) Submit appropriate, current documentation. (See below for documentation guidelines.)

Once the SSD Coordinator receives a student's request and documentation, the documentation is reviewed by our reviewers. Once the documentation is reviewed, the SSD Coordinator contacts the student with the outcome of the review. Documentation of a disability usually needs up to two weeks to be reviewed to determine eligibility, so it is important to submit documentation early. NOTE: Documentation submitted to SMU Admissions is not considered a request for services by the student, and such documentation may not be forwarded to the SSD office in a timely manner. It is therefore highly advisable to submit documentation directly to the SSD office.

The University relies on appropriately trained professionals to provide documentation as to the presence and severity of the disability in determining what accommodations are suitable. By providing the information outlined below, the evaluators will assist the University in being able to serve the student effectively. The University finds that these guidelines provide the detailed information necessary to assess the appropriateness of the student's request for academic accommodation. Given that the manifestations of a student¹s disability may change over time, the evaluation must reflect the student's current status. Therefore, the evaluation should have been conducted within three years prior to the time the student is requesting services or accommodations at SMU.

Documentation such as an IEP, ARD report, or Section 504 Plan is an educational record that rarely stands on its own as documentation of adult disability. While it may serve to supplement clinical information, a child's need of special education does not necessarily mean that the child will become an adult with a disability as indicated by more general regulations confirming disability rights. Frequently, educational records such as an IEP contain comprehensive disability assessment prepared by an authoritative provider, however. Records of that kind may be taken by SSD as authoritative disability documentation, and they may be submitted in support of the student's reasonable accommodation request.

With regard to documenting a learning disability in particular, SMU follows the Guidelines for Documentation of a Learning Disability in Adolescents and Adults that have been developed by the Association of Higher Education and Disability. To establish eligibility for services for ADD/ADHD, please see our Guidelines for Documenting Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

For ALL OTHER CONDITIONS (psychiatric, medical, visual, hearing, physical conditions and others), the documentation must be on letterhead, typed, dated and signed, and must include the following:

1. A specific diagnosis (including level of severity).
2. The specific findings in support of this diagnosis, including relevant history, tests administered, test results/scores, and a full interpretation of those test results.
3. A description of the functional limitations the student is likely to experience in an academic environment which are directly related to the stated disability.
4. Specific recommendations for academic accommodations for the curriculum and/or testing, including an explanation of why these specific accommodations are needed. This explanation must relate to the impact of the student’s particular disability on his/her functioning.
5. If the student is taking medication, this should be indicated with elaboration on how it affects the student.
6. Indicate the expected progression or stability of the disability over time. If possible, provide a description of the expected change in the functional impact of the condition(s) over time. If the condition is variable, describe the known triggers that may exacerbate the condition.
7. The evaluator’s name, address, telephone number (in the event our office needs to contact the evaluator), license number, and professional credential relevant to the diagnosis.

Questions or comments regarding these guidelines should be directed to the coordinator. Documentation may be personally delivered to 220 Memorial Health Center, faxed to (214) 768-1255, or mailed to the address listed above.

Last revision: July 2007

 

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