October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Auburn University's Transition Leadership Institute (ATLI) is celebrating its twelfth year tracking disabled students' transition into the workplace and higher education.    

Transition, in the educational context, is when teenage youth with disabilities prepare for adulthood. They are supported in this effort by public school system transition programming that provides individual planning and preparation, helping them master the challenges of higher education and a competitive workforce.

Rabren adds, "Auburn and Alabama can take pride in knowing that they have been in the vanguard of a national movement emphasizing improved outcomes for young Americans with disabilities. The Auburn Transition Institute and the Alabama State Department of Education have surveyed transition students and their families for years—well before it was a national requirement to do so—to see what they are doing after high school and how well they feel they have been prepared for what they're doing."

 The collected information is used to evaluate programs and to improve services and outcomes for employment. Statistics from the National Organization on Disability and from the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell show that the gap between employment rates for workers with disabilities and workers without disabilities had grown to over 40 percent in 2004.

Faced with this widening gap, the U.S. Department of Education now asks all school systems to track the employment and college attendance rates for youth who've received special education services. In March 2006, the Auburn Transition Leadership Institute achieved technology transfer commercialization status for a software application invention that will help other state departments of education meet this federal performance requirement.  The institute credits Representative Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn) with helping to gain the funding necessary to create ATLI and develop this product. With Hubbard's support ATLI has received funding from the State of Alabama for the last six years.

The institute also works with the state to assess the professional development needs of high school special education teachers and develop training in areas where they show a need, such as structuring transition programs, working with families, boosting the self-confidence and self-determination of students with special needs, developing structured work experience in high school, and collaborating with other agencies for linking students to services in rehabilitation, mental health, and independent living. 

As host of the annual Alabama Transition Conference, the institute annually brings over 600 transition educators, agency personnel, students, and parents to the Auburn-Opelika area for two and half days of professional and personal development.