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Spartan Project SEARCH preps developmentally disabled students for the working world

October 18, 2016
Photo by Derrick L. Turner | and Derrick L. Turner The State News

Spartan Project SEARCH, a school-to-work transition program for young adults with disabilities, has high school students with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities take part in a yearlong internship program in which they learn vital information to help them succeed in the workforce.

“They participate in various internship rotations throughout the school year so that they can get different job experiences, learn different skills, figure out the types of jobs they’d like to do and where they might like to apply to work when they graduate,” special education assistant professor and SEARCH co-director Marisa Fisher said.

Instructors follow a curriculum established by the national Project SEARCH organization.

“The first hour and a half every day is class time, so the students come to a classroom on campus and there is an instructor from Ingham ISD (Intermediate School District) who actually teaches them things, such as daily living skills, job development skills and internship skills,” Fisher said. 

There is also plenty of onsite instruction for the students, during which job coaches support the students by accompanying them to the workplace and helping them master different tasks, Fisher said.

But this is about more than employment.

“(This project will give) them a lot of job experience while also integrating them to the MSU campus, into the culture of MSU, giving them some real world practice of their social skills," Fisher said.

Counseling psychology and special education assistant professor Matthew Brodhead said Project SEARCH is important to the integration of intellectually and developmentally disabled adults into the workforce, for whom resources can be lacking after high school.

Brodhead said the project makes the students active members of the community and the social and vocational skills they learn through this project are highly beneficial to them.

The project has some students excited and eager to get involved.

“They didn’t choose to have special needs, so they should be able to have a job just like anybody else,” criminal justice sophomore Jamie Gasanov said. “I would love to be a part of it if I could.”

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