$9.5 million awarded to VCU to help people with disabilities find jobs

By Mike Frontiero
VCU School of Education

RICHMOND, Va. (Nov. 17, 2004) – Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education has received three awards totaling more than $9.5 million to help boost lagging employment figures among people with disabilities.

The school’s Rehabilitation Research and Training Center will use the money to help people with disabilities find jobs that let them work from home, make them more productive in the workplace and get the job skills they need after they graduate from high school and college.

"Nationally, the unemployment rate of people with disabilities remains stubbornly intransigent at 65 percent,” said Paul Wehman, Ph.D., the center’s director. “We will study ways to improve employment for people with disabilities."

The center will receive nearly $3.5 million over five years from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research at the U.S. Department of Education to help Americans with disabilities gain access to the workplace and make them more productive. A research team will study how the workplace can be modified to compensate for workers’ disabilities, how to minimize productivity loss due to disability or illness, and how to avoid job discrimination.

The center will collaborate with Manpower Inc., Suntrust Bank, the Virginia Business Leadership Network, the VCU Business Roundtable, and several community rehabilitation programs to reduce the unemployment rate of people with disabilities.

A second award of $5.2 million from the Social Security Administration will provide technical support for federal programs that help high school and college students with disabilities get the skills they need to find a job after graduation. Over five years, a research team led by John Kregel, Ed.D., chairman of VCU’s Department of Special Education and Disability Policy, will work with Youth Transition Process Demonstration projects in California, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi and New York. The projects are part of a federal program to help young people with disabilities become economically self-sufficient as they make the transition from school to work.

“Government programs designed to assist students after they graduate are often ineffective and poorly coordinated,” said Kregel. “Our failure to provide effective transition services costs our nation over $150 billion each year. VCU is working with state and local government officials in these states to find new ways to ensure that students with disabilities make the transition from school to employment.”

A three-year, $830,000 award from the U.S. Department of Labor will help train veterans and other Virginians with disabilities for jobs that allow them to telecommute -- work from home with computer technology.

“We believe that telecommuting can be a viable option for helping more people with disabilities get or keep their jobs,” said lead researcher Michael West, Ph.D. “It can reduce or eliminate many of the barriers they face, such as lack of transportation or appropriate jobs in their locality, inaccessible workplaces and fatigue.

“Our primary goal in this cooperative agreement is to explore how to meet their needs as well as those of their employers,” West said.

West’s group will work with the Virginia Business Leadership Network, eAdvantage, and Expediter Corporation.