Dudley Williams III is busy. He recently got a job as a brand ambassador for Land Rover Boston. He has to cook and clean when he gets back from work. And he makes time to play basketball with his friends.
Williams is living an independent life – one he said he wouldn’t have without Lesley University’s Threshold Support Program.
“Some of the skills I’ve built from the program are doing my own chores and learning to live with other people,” Williams said. “Gaining a sense of confidence in terms of social skills, getting to know other people, and really just [improving] self-confidence.”
Threshold is the rare program – and believed by Lesley to be the first – teaching neurodiverse young adults the skills needed to enter the workforce, have their own social lives and operate independently. Now, upon celebrating its 40th anniversary and receiving $1.3 million in donations as seed money, Lesley is rolling out Threshold Lifelong Support, a program that offers lifelong support to alumni and other neurodiverse people 22 and older, even if they were never part of the student program – even if they’re well into adulthood.
“It’s amazing because it’s so needed,” said Stacey Villani, director for lifelong support at Threshold. “Everyone I’ve talked to so far – the parents that I’ve talked to, the alumni – they’re so excited about having the ability to make a more robust community and have supports when they need them.”
Need for the program
Neurodiversity recognizes the normalcy and value of individuals whose brains operate in atypical ways – this includes those diagnosed with autism, ADHD or learning disorders and can include those who think their brains work differently, according to the Child Mind Institute, a New York nonprofit.
“Some disabilities come and go in times and seasons and ages and development, but some of them don’t,” Threshold instructor and occupational therapist Pamela Vaughn said. “We want to recognize that everybody’s unique experience with disability might require different resources at different seasons in their lives.” She said the lifelong program will provide a resource to many Threshold alumni still living in Cambridge who are “experiencing transitions in life.”
“Parents might be aging and getting sick,” Villani said. “[Individuals] might be losing their first jobs … some of those transitions that we go through may be harder for an individual that has a neurodiverse profile to go through alone.”
The funds for the Threshold Lifelong Support launch came from two anonymous donors, as well as Lesley University trustee Veronica Heath and her husband, Donn, and people at the traditional Threshold Programs’s 40th Anniversary Gala in May, the school said. There are already 19 lifelong support participants, a university spokesperson said.
Fees from participants will keep it operating, just as the student Threshold has tuition – $25,341 per semester for a two-year core academic program. The student Threshold offers two possible next steps toward a more independent life: $20,373 per semester for a nine-month Bridge Year program in which students live in campus residence halls and work in internships; and a 10-month, $22,144 Transition Year in which students live off campus in an apartment and look for paid employment.
Individualized education
A look at the student program gives a sense of how the lifelong program will run.
Rather than teach from a broad, one-size-fits-all curriculum, instructors work with each student to help them identify their strengths, create goals for themselves and work toward them. Instructors evaluate whether the strategies to reach those goals are working.
“We’ll say, ‘Okay, you’re gonna learn to make a healthy meal,’” Villani said. “You need to learn what a healthy meal is made of, you need to learn how to prepare it … did you successfully shop and name three things that were in a healthy meal, all three sessions that we did this month? Did you turn on the oven, not burn yourself, make the pasta three times this month?”
Having students set the goals is critical, Villani said.
“I don’t want to place you on a job washing dishes if you have an aversion to dish soap, but ‘Everybody else with a disability washes dishes, so that’s what you’re supposed to do.’ It’s the opposite of that,” she said. “It’s like: ‘What are your strengths? What are your interests? What do you like to do? What are your natural supports already?’”
Vaughn stressed the importance of individualized attention.
“A lot of students who are college-aged are learning these things by just experiencing life,” she said. “For some of our students, that’s not necessarily how they learn those things, how they learn how to be independent – they need some more of those structured, facilitated conversations and practice.”
Threshold partners with community employers to help place students in jobs and help employers understand how to work with neurodiverse people. Students such as Kyle Dalrymple, who graduated from the program in 2022 and now works at Stop & Shop and lives independently.
Skills, community and even travel
Williams, neurodiverse and a grad of the Threshold program, said he transferred to Lesley University to pursue a business major after his first year at another college didn’t work out. The school’s Threshold program had more to offer him – “more core support in terms of more structure,” Williams said.
He completed Threshold’s two-year core program in 2010 and participated in bridge-year and transition-year programs, in which he lived with a roommate and had an adviser checking in weekly.
But Threshold provided him more than just the opportunity to gain career and domestic skills: Williams also traveled to Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, and England.
“It really did a great job of building a great sense of community and also friendships,” he said.
The community is necessary, said Jen Thorell, executive director of Threshold.
“Oftentimes, we find folks with disabilities not having a large community that they can identify and are having around them. It can be a very isolating experience. So we really want to provide opportunities for folks to come together,” she said. “By doing that, we take away some of the barriers that can exist like executive functioning that may be really challenging for some folks – the anxiety around planning opportunities.”
Emphasizing Threshold
Representatives of the program attend postsecondary education fairs as a form of outreach, but most people find out about the program through word of mouth, Thorell said. That’s a good thing.
“We’re not just going out and spreading the word and pamphlets everywhere,” Thorell said. “People are coming to us because they’ve heard of the reputation that we have. And I think that says a lot.”
It’s unclear how many people will participate in the lifelong support program, but Villani said interest in the Threshold program overall is high and much more than she expected. As with the student program, word of mouth has already brought in many participates.
While Lesley announced its elimination of four under-enrolled programs and staff and faculty layoffs last October, President Janet L. Steinmayer emphasized Threshold as a priority.
“Lesley’s focus on education, mental health and the arts means the unique programs you find at Lesley – like Threshold and, and now Threshold Lifelong Support – can thrive and grow,” Steinmayer said in a statement. “Lesley is all in on Threshold, and we’re very excited to begin serving the greater Cambridge Community.”
People interested in applying to the program can apply through Lesley University’s Threshold Program website.
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