Serving Students with Significant Disabilities in Two-Year Colleges: Center for Special Needs, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee, WI.

This report is an outcome of a project designed to seek, screen, evaluate, describe, and disseminate highly effective approaches used by two-year colleges to serve students with significant disabilities. "Two-year colleges" included academic institutions, technical colleges, and vocational institutes. From a pool of 18 applicants, the project made site reviews of six schools. This volume describes the approach used by Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. MATC has developed a Center for Special Needs that delivers reasonable and necessary accommodations and supportive services to students with disabilities. The Center offers tutoring services for disadvantaged students, instructional programs for students with disabilities, and an associate degree program in sign language and interpreting. The Center aims to promote educational retention and success, the acquisition of independent living skills, and the development of skills and knowledge that will enable individuals with disabilities to acquire and maintain competitive employment. The report discusses the mission, goals and objectives of the Center, significant features of the Center, key factors that make MATC's approach effective for students with significant disabilities, and evaluation results demonstrating the effectiveness of the Center's approach. Characteristics that are manifested in all six of the profiled schools are also listed and an accompanying CD-ROM describes the projects. (CR)