Transition
Since the mid-1980s, transition has become a priority in national education policy, helping students with disabilities make a successful passage from secondary school to the roles and responsibilities of adult life. Alabama schools serve about 30,000 youth between the ages 14-21 who are students with special needs in any given year, and more than 5,000 of these students exit the high school annually to journey toward greater independence, meaningful work, continuing education and the comforts of family and community life.

During the long passage into adulthood, students with developmental disabilities face the same challenges as their peers, as well as more intense and complex ones. Some of the challenges are inherent with the type of disability. Some are inherent with society's historical but diminishing biases. These challenges may prove difficult or even impossible to overcome without a structured, multidimensional approach?one that identifies barriers to success, develops ways to surmount those barriers and forges collaborations to sustain progress. This approach follows the mission of the Auburn Transition Leadership Institute, which is to improve the quality of life for youth and young adults with disabilities.

The Institute

"The Institute, in close partnership with Alabama's education and rehabilitation agencies, upholds values that insist that each high school student with a disability be instilled with a strong sense of self-assurance and determination, equipped with goal setting strategies and self-directing skills, and provided with opportunities that positively affect quality of life, including work, friendships and other social networks," said Dr. Philip Browning, Institute director and head of the Department of Rehabilitation & Special Education (RSED). "These values afford all Alabama youths the opportunity to realize their hopes and aspirations, to become responsible and productive citizens and to pursue the American Dream."

To uphold and broadcast these worthy values, the programs of the Transition Leadership Institute are modeled after Auburn University's three foundations of academic service?instruction, research and outreach. Within this framework, the Institute has four priorities: preparing highly qualified teachers; evaluating and researching programs and services; continuing education for practitioners; and initiating and developing innovative new programs.

• Instruction: Aligned with the Institute us a teacher preparation program designed to attract graduate students to the field of secondary education with an emphasis on transition. Program Director Dr. Caroline Dunn, an associate professor with RSED, has secured $1.7 million to date from the U.S. Department of Education. The program so far has supplied this and adjacent states with 65 graduates prepared to serve as highly qualified secondary teachers.
• Research: The Institute, in concert with the Alabama State department of Special Education, has developed the Alabama Student Tracking System, which surveys a sizable sample of current and former high school students with disabilities about their career goals and aspirations, as well as their post school successes and challenges. This research provides a sound basis for program improvement in public school systems, as well as an index of educational accountability beyond the school years. The system continues to gain national prominence as an important strategy for educational program evaluation; a federal initiative is underway for all states to consider developing similar tracking systems.
• Outreach: The Auburn Transition Conference is one of Alabama's premier annual educational events focusing on students with disabilities. The conference, hosted by and coordinated through the Transition Leadership Institute, has served more than 7,000 participants from Alabama and neighboring states during its 13 years in existence. Each of the past several conferences has attracted more than 700 teachers, rehabilitation practitioners and other transition stakeholders to a three-day networking program of workshops and sessions on best practices. Dr. Andrew Halpern, a national leader in transition, has called it "the finest example of a state conference on transition that exists in our country."
• Leadership: Institute associate Dr. Karen Rabren, assistant professor in RSED and former director of the Alabama Transition Initiative, oversees two of the Institute's groundbreaking model programs made possible by the U.S. Department of Education grants totaling more than $1.3 million. Work Links develops a statewide occupational preparation curriculum for high school students with more significant disabilities, and Local Transition Partnerships links schools, agencies and community support systems to help students and their families navigate more easily through the transition period. Dr. Rabren recently presented her transition research at the prestigious Oxford University Roundtable, which considers major issues in contemporary educational policy in the United States, the United Kingdom and other selected countries.

Recognition

Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Department of Education Dr. Robert Pasternack, in an address to the participants of the 2003 Alabama Transition Conference in Auburn, said, "I want to congratulate you in Alabama for the incredible work you all are doing in transition. We need to use Alabama as a model for the rest of the country."

The vibrant relationship between the Institute and the two state agencies dynamically associated with it led Dr. Roberta Ginivan of the National Transition Alliance to write, "The leadership, high level of collaboration, and expectations of excellence demonstrated by Auburn University, the Alabama State Department of Education and the Alabama State Department of Rehabilitation Services are immediately evident as one of the state's greatest strengthens in transition." Alabama was recognized by the Alliance as having one of the most promising transition programs in the nation.

"Auburn University's leadership has helped to bring national recognition to Alabama's transition program," said Dr. Mabrey Whetstone of the Alabama State Department of Education, and his view is substantiated by a report to AU from a nationally assembled review team which says that the Institute is a "tremendous" asset to Auburn and the state of Alabama and helps to establish national transition policy and research directions.

"Our Transition Leadership Institute represents yet another way in which Auburn is truly making a difference in Alabama and states beyond," said Dr. Frances Kochan, interim dean of the College of Education.

With the continued support of the University and its College of Education, the state agencies and the state legislature, the Auburn Transition Leadership Institute serves Alabama by helping to improve, in measurable terms and in essential ways, the quality of life for young citizens with disabilities.