Legal Commentary

Asperger Syndrome DVD Available for Educators

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

My old friend Stan Jaskiewicz writes to a college mailing list,

Since so many of members of our class of 1982 are in academia, I thought I would make you aware of a new, free resource to assist you in working with students with Asperger Syndrome, a form of high functioning autism (and the type that my son has) that is particularly common among those skilled in math and science.

The brief video (available at the website or on DVD) explains the social and educational challenges these students face in the college, and how accommodations to the learning environment can help such students to benefit from college classes. The website also has a link to download a free publication, “Understanding Asperger Syndrome: A Professor’s Guide.”

Please feel free to circulate this information to your professional colleagues who may have students with Asperger’s in their classes.

The text of his attachment is below. Or skip straight to the free download. Stan is a hero.

OAR Releases Asperger DVD for College Professors

Arlington, VA, April 18— The Organization for Autism Research (OAR) released Understanding Asperger Syndrome: A Professor’s Guide, a 12-minute video for use by college students with Asperger Syndrome as a tool to educate their professors, teaching assistants, and others about the disorder. OAR produced the DVD in cooperation with the Global Regional Asperger Syndrome Project (GRASP) and Pace University in New York thanks to a grant from the Schwallie Family Foundation. The video is available now for viewing and download at no cost on OAR’s Web page, www.researchautism.org/resources/AspergerDVDSeries.asp.

“The idea behind this series,” said Peter Gerhardt, Ed.D., OAR’s president, “is to have adults with Asperger Syndrome in effect teach what it means to be an adult with the disorder.”

To that end, the video features two people with Asperger Syndrome, Michael John Carley from GRASP and Kiriana Cownesage, a doctoral student at NYU. Dr. Gerhardt also appears providing information on “reasonable accommodations” in the college classroom. In addition to being posted on OAR’s Web site, OAR will post it on YouTube.com and produce DVDs to be available upon request via the Web site by early June.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).