Reaching out to students with special needs

By Wendy Soderburg

Kathy Molini, director of UCLA's Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), remembers vividly the day she decided to become independent.

She was 18, a post-polio wheelchair user who was spending the morning alone in the Westwood home she shared with her mother, father and younger sister. Usually they were on hand to fetch things for Molini. But on that day, there was a piece of paper she wanted off the upright piano, and no one else was around.

"I thought, they'll be home soon, they can get it for me," Molini recalled. But when they didn't come home right away, Molini started getting agitated. "I was thinking, 'I want that. Where are they? Well, gosh darn it, I'm going to try and get it myself,' " she said. "And I did it! But at the same time, I thought, 'Now you've really cooked your goose, because you can't have a gofer anymore!' "

That stubborn streak has served Molini well in her interactions with students who use the services of the OSD. Because of her own youthful experiences, "I know every game in the book," she said, laughing. "Sometimes when you're working with students, self-disclosure is very powerful. They will listen to you because you've become more of an equal at that point, and, of course, my motive is to get them to do what I know will benefit them in the end."

When Molini became director of the OSD in 1986, she had a staff of four and a clientele of about 330 students a year. Today, there are approximately 1,500 students with permanent or temporary disabilities that OSD serves annually, and Molini's staff has grown to 13 full-time employees — including three learning disabilities specialists — and a group of UCLA students who act as service providers, such as note-takers and transcribers.

The OSD, a unit of Student Affairs, also offers test-proctoring; reading/scanning services; priority enrollment/registration assistance; an on-campus van service; and a resource room that provides special adaptive equipment and devices.

Emanuel Lin, born with cerebral palsy, received his bachelor's (2005) and master's (2007) degrees in computer science from UCLA and was a regular user of the OSD during his college career.

"The OSD staff is great," said Lin, now a software engineer. "They're always open to help students with their questions. They're actually very involved in the UCLA population as well, because people who are not disabled are needed to help the office as note-takers or transcribers. They're very supportive and understanding of what a disabled individual needs help with."

Molini's own student days were spent at Santa Monica College, where she later found a job she loved at the Disabled Students Center. When a colleague told her about a teacher-training program at USC, Molini wasn't sure she wanted to leave.

It was her husband, John, also a post-polio wheelchair user, who encouraged her to try it, so she enrolled at USC and earned an M.A. in education in 1985. The UCLA job soon followed.

Molini believes that disability spurs one to be creative. "It's about alternative ways of getting to the same goal, and that's fascinating because it opens up a lot of thought processes that it wouldn't otherwise," she said. "Disability takes you various places, which can be fun and usually means there's no boredom. Every day is different."