RASE Program | Photo by Sophie Dang | The Wright State Guardian
The Wright State University Office of Disability Services offers a program called Raiders on the Autism Spectrum Excelling, specially designed for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
About RASE
Heather Rando, the director of Disability Services, created the RASE program to help incoming students with autism who plan on coming to Wright State University.
“I created the RASE program in 2012 to address a need for transition support for students on the Autism spectrum moving from high school to college,” Rando said.
RASE is designed to help students make their transition from high school to college life easier. The program also offers opportunities to socialize with other like-minded peers and RASE coaches. Jamison Shuey and Simon Martin, current RASE students, both started in the fall 2021 semester.
“RASE is for someone who is on the Autism spectrum who are looking for new friends and do all kinds of activities including cards, rock climbing,” Shuey said.
Martin agrees.
“[The] RASE program is hosted by ODS where we get together a couple of times a week. Whether it's physical, mental and/or rarely off-campus, we can go out and enjoy ourselves,” Martin said.
In addition to social opportunities, the RASE program also helps students with study sessions that are set up a couple of days a week to help students be productive while meeting new people.
RASE coaches
The RASE program is also an opportunity for students without ASD to become peer coaches. To be a RASE coach, students must meet a set of criteria.
“[RASE coaches are] junior, senior or graduate students with good communication, time management, social and advocacy skills,” Rando said.
There are many benefits to being a RASE coach.
“You learn from the different perspectives and experiences while working with the students,” Sophie Dang, a former RASE coach who worked with RASE students for three years, said.
Working with RASE students can be a great opportunity to not only create friendships with them but also meet other RASE coaches.
Student suggestions to further improve the program
While RASE has been successful in improving students’ lives, some challenges need to be addressed. The first is to implement better forms of communication. Jameson suggests using emails instead of Pilot as a main form of communication.
He also points out that putting event reminders on the RASE Pilot page may not be the best solution to get participation from RASE students because they are solely focused on academics. This leads to another problem, which is getting more people in the RASE program to participate in activities.
A reason that this could be the case is that there are not many engaging activities to get RASE students interested in attending. Some may prefer being in a fun environment without worrying about noise levels, while others prefer to do things that keep them moving.
“Adding more activities outside of campus that are local and nearby, which requires more methods of transportation, [would help],” Martin suggested.
Takeaways
While the RASE program has its own benefits and struggles, the program helps students with ASD coming and/or transferring to Wright State University make their college life much easier.
“If you want to make new friends, come to different activities RASE is hosting, have a mode of transportation available if RASE is hosting any off-campus activities,” Jameson said.
Dang encourages students to be a RASE coach.
“Do it,” Dang said. “You learn a lot and you meet some great people that may become your friends. Another word of advice is that when something doesn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to, know that you’ve tried your best.”
Those who are interested in joining the RASE program or want to become a RASE coach can reach out to ODS for more information or visit the ODS page on Wright State’s website.
