PROJECT EXCEL
1996- 1999

In 1996, the Office of Disability Services received funding from the Department of Education, Libraries and Lifelong Learning to fund a research project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of career development and job placement strategies for students with disabilities on the STCC campus. The project was designed to measure the effectiveness of training and educational services to faculty and staff.

The primary purpose of Project EXCEL was to demonstrate and evaluate effective strategies that could positively affect the career development, learning, job placement and retention of adults with disabilities who were mainstreamed through community college career programs.

It was hypothesized that:

  • Persistence rates and graduation rates of adult college students with disabilities would improve after identification of career goals and participation in a comprehensive service delivery program.

  • Job placement rates for adult students with disabilities who acquired structured career-relevant work experience while matriculating through college would meet or exceed the placement rates of students with disabilities who did not have that experience.
  • Career education faculty who had professional development exposure to ADA regulations and to uses of adaptive technology for assisting persons with disabilities would increase the number of students they referred to employers.

The project findings showed evidence of higher retention rates among EXCEL participants. Seventy-two percent of first-year EXCEL participants were retained throughout the three-year period, while only 52 percent of the control group of non-participants were retained. During the second year of the project, almost 66 percent of the EXCEL participants were retained, while only 43 percent of the non-participants were retained. At the end of the three-year project, about half of the retained participants graduated and about half were still enrolled.

The final report from the project, which includes data gathered from surveying faculty, is available in MSWord, PDF (requires free Acrobat reader), or in paper copy by contacting Kris Kozuch. Any additional questions may be answered by contacting Kris Kozuch at kkozuch@stcc.edu