Susan Senator

This week  (10/10-10/13) in Boston, the Association of Community College Trustees is having its 43rd annual leadership congress. Why should you care? Because CCCAID (Community College Consortium for Autism and Intellectual Disabilties) will be presenting their model on how community colleges can offer affordable and sustainable curricula to people with autism and intellectual disabilities. CCCAID currently has a dozen or so such programs throughout the country, each exhibiting astonishing success with its graduates.

I have been working with CCCAID for nearly a year now, as the Director of Autism Adult Services and Outreach. My role in the organization has been to represent parents of adults with autism and intellectual disabilities, to members of Congress and the Administration, as well as to colleagues in London and eventually other countries. CCCAID has made very promising inroads into extending the mission of the community college to include many more learners than ever before, with funding that mostly already exists, and can be reallocated in new ways.

Our mission at CCCAID is to help community colleges offer quality post-secondary education and job training for people with ASD and intellectual disabilities, real-world, hands-on experience and connections to the local community that last beyond graduation.  This task goes hand-in-hand with advocacy in Washington, to make sure that the funding streams remain healthy and available to community colleges. Two of CCCAID’s successful models will be presenting at the Friday morning session and I will be there to talk about my experience with autism adulthood and what kind of change in program offerings are needed.