A
Healthy Dose of Campus Care
The classroom
is only one place the University has an impact
Enriching
the lives of disabled children. Guiding working families through the complexities
of social services. Helping seniors remain independent. For scores of
Sac State faculty and students, touching lives throughout the Capital
Region is a healthy habit.
Youthful
Benefits
Numerous programs in the Colleges of Education, Health and Human Services,
and Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Regional and Continuing Education
show the classroom is only one place the University has an impact.
In Project PLAY (Play-Oriented Lifetime Activities for Youth), children
with disabilities discover the joy of recreation.
Developed by kinesiology and health science professor Scott Modell, the
12-week program lets kids and parents see the variety of social, leisure
and fitness activities available to kids with disabilities like cerebral
palsy, spina bifuda or muscular dystrophy. It features adapted games like
softball, as well as more individualized sports like swimming and gymnastics.
For
the past two summers, Modell and an army of student volunteers have also
put on a water-soaked cousin of Project PLAY for a slightly older crowd.
WAVE (Water Adventures in Varied Environments) Camp gives 10- to 19-year-olds
with disabilities the chance to participate in a typical summer sleep-away
camp. The schedule is jam-packed. In the mornings, campers might be paddling
on the waters of the CSUS Aquatic Center at Lake Natoma or mastering adapted
water-skiing. Afternoons can entail sailing, swimming or water polo. Along
the way friendships form, new interests are established and confidence
grows.
While both Project PLAY and WAVE Camp are focused on fun, Modell is driven
by a serious purpose.
“The key is to provide a way for individuals with disabilities to
make appropriate use of their free time through recreation, sports and
leisure,” he says. “We want them to develop lifelong physical
activity habits by introducing them to activities that they wouldn’t
otherwise be exposed to.”
Many other Sacramento-area children benefit from campus programs as well.
Low-cost screening and treatment for speech and language difficulties
is available from the Maryjane Rees Language, Speech and Hearing Center.
The center offers a variety of services that address articulation problems—like
saying “wabbit” instead of “rabbit”—or fluency
disorders like stuttering. They also offer hearing evaluations to check
for auditory processing disorders.
The clinic visits are conducted by students in the speech pathology and
audiology master’s programs under the supervision of a faculty member.
Speech and hearing services for adults are also offered.
Two other campus programs address the needs of children with autistic
spectrum disorder.
As part of an effort to help students with autism succeed in the traditional
classroom environment, special education, rehabilitation and school psychology
professors Steven Daley and Maurine Ballard-Rosa will soon start serving
as on-site advisors in selected Sacramento County School District classrooms.
In conjunction with the UC Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neuro-
developmental Disorders) Institute, Daley and Ballard-Rosa will work with
school personnel, providing consulting help, ideas and problem-solving.
“We’ll provide ongoing support to enhance the children’s
chances of success in a typical setting,” Daley says. “Children
with autism have unique learning traits, unique behavioral characteristics
and unique needs.”
Another CSUS-connnected program that focuses on children with autism is
the Applied Behavior Consultants (ABC) School, created by psychology professor
Joseph Morrow. It is the only school in the country designed specifically
for children with autism. Morrow says the ABC method can help about 40
percent of autistic children get into mainstream public education classes,
if the child is enrolled in the program by age four. At least 10 Sac State
students work as interns in the program.