ACC organizational update: Special Populations Office

ACC’s Special Populations Office has reorganized staff and processes to better coordinate its five focus areas and align services to the college’s guided pathways.

The changes bring together expertise to provide a more holistic approach to advising and supporting students, regardless of their special need. Special Populations areas are:

Perkins and other grants

angelica_cancino2

Angelica Cancino

As manager of special support and grants, Angelica Cancino handles the day-to-day administration and support for students receiving Perkins and Mitte grant funds for expenses such as child care, textbooks, and transportation. She also supports current and former foster care students and those in career-technical programs.

Support Center

Cancino also oversees the Support Center, which assists low-income students with some of the needs mentioned above. The center provides support and intervention through intensive case management by Special Populations advocates. These advocates also provide area-of-study advising information to students in the Foster Care Student, Austin College Access Network, and Austin Opportunity Youth Collaborative programs.

Student Accessibility Services (formerly Office for Students with Disabilities)

Lauren Sebel

Lauren Sebel

These services previously were administered by Student Services deans at each campus. With its 2014 name change, SAS renewed its focus on increasing accessibility collegewide in addition to assisting individual students. SAS Director Lauren Sebel ensures services are coordinated and consistent across all campuses. She supervises SAS coordinators on each campus. View the list of SAS coordinators.

 

Courtney Mack

Courtney Mack

Sean Loraas

Sean Loraas

Alternative Media

Sean Loraas and Courtney Mack lead this area. “Alt media” converts instructional material into accessible formats including braille and audio files. Loraas and Mack consult with faculty and staff on accessibility of classroom and online materials — an ever-pressing need.

Interpreter Services (IS)

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Ginger Bennett

IS Supervisor Ginger Bennett oversees accessibility services for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, faculty and staff. IS comprises a coordinator, administrative assistant, six staff interpreters, and more than 170 part-time interpreters. IS can arrange sign language interpreters and CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) for the classroom and college activities and events. Bennett also manages media captioning editors who close-caption instructional and institutional media upon request.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to contact the above individuals for assistance, or email Steve Christopher, executive director of special populations, ([email protected]) with questions or input.

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