For the future generations of autistic students pursuing higher education, there is hope to be found in those currently molding college autism support. Some of the most transformative work being done for autistic college students is done by people who are closely impacted by ASD, like Dr. Lawrence Fung, the founder and director of the Stanford Neurodiversity Project, a special initiative of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. 

Dr. Fung began his career in autism support when he was a medical student. During his clinical rotations, his son was diagnosed with ASD and that’s when he chose psychiatry as his specialty. He wanted his son to have a positive identity as a person with autism. Dr. Fung founded the initiative with the goal to train for and promote employment. 

“Eighty percent of people on the autism spectrum are unemployed or underemployed, and we thought this was an important issue,” said Dr. Fung. “We realized if they [autistic students] are better off with good support in college years, then they would not need to worry about pre-employment training and struggling to find work.” 

The Stanford Neurodiversity Project is largely concerned with employment after college. It collaborates with large, medium, and small businesses and corporations, such as Google and IBM to promote neurodiverse employment and neurodiversity training. 

“Employment is so important and preparing for employment in college is so important. So, a lot of what I do is because I want my son to be able to have a good job, and also others like him to have a good job,” Dr. Fung said. 

Sara Gardner, the founder and director of Neurodiversity Navigators at Bellevue College, has applied their practical and lived experience to the formulation of the program. Gardner was diagnosed with ASD about 20 years ago at 41 years old, after their son was diagnosed when he was 11. By the time Gardner received a diagnosis, they were already teaching parenting classes based on Dr. Ross Greene’s, “The Explosive Child”. In the book Dr. Greene outlines a new approach to how parents can understand and manage their child’s behavioral challenges through what Greene calls “Collaborative Problem Solving”, an approach Gardner uses with Neurodiversity Navigators. 

Gardner moved to Washington when their son was accepted to a notable college for digital game design. They continued to advocate for families at IEP meetings and families with all different types of disabilities, while also doing other work in the field of autism care. 

At the time, Bellevue College began a pilot program to support their autistic students and Gardner was hired part-time. Later, the program was shut down and all the staff, except Gardner, were let go. Bellevue College was then vacant of a proper support program. However, that was only until Gardner took matters into their own hands.  

Gardner spent the following summer researching various support programs with good retention to see what they were doing right, read scholarly articles about autism, as well as first person perspectives, and applied personal experience. Gardner came back in the fall with an effective powerpoint and a full program. Gardner took their gatherings and went to the Vice President of Student Success, who took it to the president of the college who said, “Please build this as large as you can.”

What was originally called “Autism Spectrum Navigators” transformed to “Neurodiversity Navigators” and was launched in 2011. That fall, the program had 18 students, and was running off of small funding through the Disability Resource Center and fundraising. Still in the red, Gardner had a sit down with the president and explained that the program was bringing in full time equivalent students, which was cash in the college’s bank. Neurodiversity Navigators was then granted state funding. 

The program had 75 incoming students in the fall of 2021 and now has well over 100 enrolled. Using the collaborative problem solving framework by Ross Greene, Neurodiversity Navigators helps students to identify problems and think of ways to brainstorm solutions. This involves peer mentors, who meet with students once a week for 45 minutes. Another program pillar is cohorts, which Gardner says they adapted from Stanford’s learning community. The cohorts are made up of about 25 students and each cohort takes classes alongside each other. The classes are two-to-five credits, spending each quarter focusing on executive functioning, self-advocacy, social interaction, and self-regulation.

Neurodiversity Navigators also welcomes Running Start students, which refers to high school students who are taking dual credit courses. High school students, age 16 and older, who wish to render services can register for the program through their school.

According to Gardner, a couple of features that were important to implement in the program include autistic or neurodivergent identity development and social interaction, rather than social skills.

Neurodivergent identity development was important for Gardner to include because many people with autism will mask their symptoms to appear more neurotypical. This can lead to autism burnout. Many people experience burnout, which is physical, emotional, and cognitive depletion, resulting from prolonged stress. For autistic people, this condition may be much more severe, causing inability to speak or care for themselves, and can cause struggles with short term memory, according to a 2021 New York Times article by Beth Winegarner. Anxiety and depression are also common for people with autism and experiencing burnout may worsen such conditions. For Gardner, that’s something they wanted to avoid with their students if possible. Neurodivergent identity development was a starting point.

Gardner said, “It’s about learning that it's okay to be autistic and it's okay to be who you are and look for your strengths within your identity rather than look for what you need to suppress about you.”

Autistic people are often taught neurotypical social skills, which for Gardner was incredibly soul crushing. Gardner felt they were forced to hide who they were to fit into a normative, neurotypical way of interacting. Gardner, alongside some of their autistic peers, developed social interaction, which focuses on individuals communicating and addressing each other more humanely, rather than training students on “normal” social interaction. 

Fahy at STEP also takes a more human approach to social skills. “We all think differently. Our brains are all wired the way they are. So, given that, I think our approach is that it’s useful to try to teach students to understand that the most successful social interactions are those where you try to think about what the other person's role is and where they’re coming from. I think we all collectively benefit from developing our own ability to look at the moment”, said Fahy. 

What it comes down to, according to Gardner, is a social justice framework, where all students are regarded with equal respect. Much of the program is guided by what Gardner’s students feel they need, so the program is constantly shape shifting. However, it remains constant in doing whatever is best to support the students.

Gardner remarks, “It’s not so much a matter of helping, I would say, it’s a matter of not wanting other young people to have to deal with what I had to deal with.”