TerpsEXCEED: Making College Possible for All ~ 1330

Tim Yeah. What’s this, Evan?

Evan All right, so what we’re coming here for is the McKeldin Mall. So this is where people, people have the most classes, and what we’re here in front of is the McKeldin Library.

This is where people do study and do read and do big projects. Mm-hmm. On the mall, in the beginning, this is like everything happened.

Tim Evan is giving me a tour of his campus. He is a wealth of information. He shows me the library, the football stadium, and he shares that if you rub the nose of Testudo, the bronze terrapin statue at the center of campus, that it’s supposed to bring you good luck.

He’s also a graduate of TerpEXCEED, a two-year program at UMD for students with intellectual disabilities, students who not long ago weren’t expected to be here at all. TerpEXCEED stands for Experiencing College for Education and Employment Discovery. It launched in 2021 and students take real University of Maryland courses, credit-bearing classes, alongside every other student at this university.

They live in dorms. They join clubs. They do internships. They earn a credential recognized by UMD with a full academic transcript. They get a student ID, a UMD email address, a TerpZone bowling card. In other words, they’re students, the same as anyone else walking across McKeldin Mall on a Thursday morning in November.

But there’s something else happening at TerpEXCEED, something that sets it apart from other programs like it. I heard it from Betsy Tornquist, one of the program’s academic coordinators, while she and Evan were walking me around campus.

Betsy When we started, we had two students and we had 15 peer mentors, and now we have 14 students and more than 170 peer mentors.

We get that. About… When we ask, it’s a class for 100 students, and the first day, we ask if they have any experience with, you know, working with people or knowing people with disabilities, but half have none. It’s a gen ed requirement, so someone like Grace, who’s doing engineering, you know, you have to have a certain amount of gen ed requirements.

We need two. And I think people think like, “Okay, this is an interesting idea. This is different than what I’m doing in all my other classes.”

Tim The peer mentoring class at UMD counts as a general education requirement, the kind of course that engineering students, business students, kinesiology students need to graduate.

In that class, they learn how to become a peer mentor through a curriculum three hours a week outside of class spent with Terps EXCEED students, going to class together, hitting the gym, catching a basketball game. It was designed that way on purpose.

Betsy We didn’t wanna rely on paying people or volunteers.

We wanted a little skin in the game, so they get credit for the class. Testudo is, um…

Tim What’s Testudo?

Evan It’s—

Tim Mm-hmm…

Evan it’s our mascot. It’s, our mascot… the Terrapin. His name is Testudo. So—

Tim Oh.

Evan So—

Tim I did not know

Evan that. So usually Testudo, our mascot, at like every sporting event— He likes, um—

Tim Yeah.

Evan Wait. They say, if you like rub Testudo’s nose, it means it brings you good luck.

Tim Oh, I better rub his nose.

Today, we’re going to hear from peer mentors themselves, from the Terps EXCEED students they walk alongside, and from the people who built this program about what it actually means to make a place like this one feel like it belongs to everyone.

Oh, and I rubbed Testudo’s nose for good luck. Evan seemed pretty sure it was gonna work. I’m Tim Villegas. You are listening to Think Inclusive, MCIE’s podcast about building schools where every learner belongs. And you are listening to a very special episode, the first episode of a four-part series in collaboration with Think College.

I’m so excited you’re here. After a quick break, more from Terps EXCEED peer mentors and students.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Think College, the leading national center dedicated to expanding real college options for students with intellectual disability. Think College offers resources, training, and hands-on technical assistance for families, educators, and programs across the country. They also manage the only national directory of college programs for students with intellectual disability, making it easier than ever to explore what’s possible.

With a commitment to equity and evidence-based practice, Think College is helping campuses evolve, shaping policy, and elevating student voices. Learn more at thinkcollege.net.

Betsy When we started, you know, it’s Amy, Meredith, and I are all like middle-aged women. And we were running around and going to classes with students until we could get the peer mentors kind of in place. Yeah. And nobody wants to go to class with their mom.

Tim The peer mentor model at Terp Succeed is built on a simple insight. For a student with an intellectual disability trying to navigate a 40,000-person university, the most useful person in the room isn’t a professor or a coordinator, it’s someone their own age, someone who can go to a hip hop class with you, or to Zumba, or to the dining hall when you don’t wanna eat alone.

Tell me about going to class. What is that like?

Alex It’s a cool experience. I get to sit in on a class that I wouldn’t normally take myself, but for example, the student is taking the class, and just being there peer mentoring, I’m just there to model.

Tim Mm-hmm.

Alex If there’s a group assignment, I’m not actually part of the group assignment, but I kind of simulate being part of a group assignment inside that class.

So I’m kind of like a shadow student ’cause I’m not actually part of the class. The student is, the Terp Succeed student is part of the class, so they’re getting involved in all the group assignments. But I feel like I just—

Tim You’re, you’re just there to support.

Alex Yeah. Yeah, there to support. To support and model and, like, get—

Tim And the class is just like any class that anyone would—

Alex Mm-hmm. Would grab. Yeah, of course. Just typical, standard college classes.

Tim Alex is a biology major in his fourth year, what Betsy calls a leadership peer mentor. He’s been paired with a Terp Succeed senior named Donovan, helping him with a capstone project on community service and leadership. But peer mentoring isn’t just going to class.

Ashley Sometimes it’s dinner. Weekly, usually I have dinner with one of the alumni, Matthew, one of the students we were talking about earlier, and right now we are working on helping him learn how to cook, so we try out different recipes. So for example, on Tuesday he came over and we had spaghetti and meat sauce.

Tim Ashley is a dual degree senior, philosophy, politics, economics, and Spanish, who just got into law school. More on how she ended up there in a few minutes. The structure underneath all of this, the calendars, and GroupMes, and team assignments, was designed so the program could scale beyond what three coordinators could physically do.

Betsy But we don’t assign because people gravitate towards each other. Our 14 students all have very different personalities. Our peer mentors all have very different personalities, so as they get to know each other, they kind of naturally… so every semester we offer a class for 100.

We always fill up.

Tim Carly Ruderman is a performing arts major in her second year, a senior in Terp Succeed terms. She takes three classes this semester: intro to acting, music fundamentals, and hip hop, all at The Clarice, UMD’s Performing Arts Center.

Carly Well, I went to a special ed school growing up.

Tim Mm-hmm.

Carly And so my— And my classes were, like, really small, and they were, like, split into like different groups—

Tim Mm-hmm…

Carly for, like, English, math, science, and social studies.

And we also got some other classes like social skills, voc ed, and career development.

Tim Mm-hmm.

Carly Here at UMD, I feel more like a young independent woman and because it makes me feel more free.

Tim Precious came to Terps Exceed with a different set of grievances.

Precious In high school, they treat us as like babies. Well, I don’t want that for myself, so I want to talk, okay, I need to be independent for myself.

I need to like stay out there.

Tim Yeah.

Precious I don’t want to depend on my parents too much, but I was going to college because I want to experience college. I want to study more, get more knowledge of different expectations for myself, and maybe go to like finding something I like to do for myself. Like I said, I like to do fashion, so I make sure that I study business and communication because business and communication is, like, into fashion.

So yeah.

Tim She’s now in her second year at UMD, studying communication and business. She has two internships this semester, one at the university’s career center, and one at a clothing boutique near campus called Uptown Chic Skate. And she’s not the only one with big plans.

Carly I wanna become a famous singer, actress, dancer, musician, author, fashion designer.

Tim When Alex signed up for the peer mentor class in the spring of 2024, he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d find, but he had a theory.

Alex My high school was actually, I think, pretty good at being, really good at inclusivity. I think it did a great job as everyone was taking the same classes. It was awesome. And just having that experience, I wanted to

I wanted to see that happen at Kenyon College. Being a part of the program that allows that to happen was something I really wanted to do. When I signed up for the peer mentor class, it was exactly what I wanted. Being a peer mentor has been great and has lived up to what I thought it would be, so.

Tim Betsy Tornquist has been watching this happen since the program started. She’s seen peer mentors go on to medical school and build entire careers around what they’ve discovered at TerpsEXCEED. She’s seen psychology majors become therapists who specialize in people with intellectual disabilities. Every semester, she says, it happens again.

Betsy These mentors are the absolute most amazing people, and every semester I’m, like—

Tim Yeah…

Betsy my heart grows more—

Tim Yeah…

Betsy seeing how— Yeah… awesome they are.

Tim Yeah. It’s, it’s amazing.

They become fierce advocates, too.

Sometimes fierce in ways she didn’t anticipate.

Betsy Our TerpsEXCEED soccer team was horrible.

Horrible. It was a bunch of peer mentors and TerpsEXCEED students. They were terrible. And one time they played, like, some group that was, like, a club of some kind. Maybe it was a fraternity. And they kind of didn’t… The other team didn’t play hard.

Tim Mm-hmm.

Betsy They kind of let them win, and the peer mentors were so upset that they let—

Tim Right.

Betsy them win.

Tim Uh-huh.

Betsy And meanwhile, like, most of our guys were like, “We finally won.”

Tim I know. Ashley didn’t arrive at TerpsEXCEED through a brochure or a class registration system. She arrived through the dining hall.

Ashley Really just like a total coincidence, and I wrote my law school application essay on it actually.

I was in the dining hall one day and I had seen Matthew sitting with a birthday cake and a birthday hat. And I’m a really picky eater so I do like tons of laps around the dining hall trying to make up my mind. But I had been walking around for like 10 minutes and I had seen that he was still alone like the whole time I was walking.

So by the time I got food I went up to him and I asked him, “Is it your birthday?” And he said, “Yes.” And I said, “Would you mind if I ate my lunch with you?” And he said, “Yes.” So at that point when I met him he wasn’t very communicative verbally, so like most of our communication he was just showing me like his name on his phone screen.

He like texted it out for me and said he was like in Terp Succeed. Now he would never do that. Like he would say it verbally like, “Oh, I’m Matthew Stewart. I’m in Terp Succeed. I live in the flats at College Park.” But when I met him that wasn’t the case.

Tim Ashley has a brother with autism.

Ashley I think kind of my mindset is if my brother were in a situation where he went to college and like he was alone at a table I would hope someone was kind enough to go up and sit with him.

So I think like what my parents have taught me about like what it means to be inclusive, as a family member has kind of like extended to what it means to be inclusive as a peer mentor.

Tim Mm.

Ashley So.

Tim I never heard that story.

Ashley Yeah.

Tim When I asked both Precious and Ashley for their favorite memory from their time at Terp Succeed, Precious talked about a student named Patrick, a senior who graduated the year before.

Precious Me and Patrick was close towards doing almost everything together before he graduated and the experience make me to open up to everybody. Sometimes I don’t like to… Like I like to stay by myself most of the time. So when Patrick came into my life I like opened up a little bit to him and he was just like, “Oh, it’s okay.

You can open up to everybody. Everybody will really like judge you.” And I started opening up to everybody.

Tim Ashley’s favorite memory is about the same student she met in the dining hall two years earlier, Matthew, the birthday cake, the boy who showed her his name on a phone screen because talking out loud can be hard.

Ashley I think my favorite memory was definitely the graduation party that Matthew had in the spring.

And I say that because it was kind of just like the whole Terp Succeed group was together, and, like, families, like, not just the students, but… and, like, peer mentors, but also students’ families, and, like, peer mentors friends came. And we really got to see how… Sorry, like, I’ll cry. But we really got to see how Matthew grew.

And, like, oh, my gosh, he gave a speech. Awesome. And like I said, like, that wouldn’t have been something that he did when I met him, but when he gave that speech, oh, my gosh, like, I was literally, like, crying the whole time because I was so proud. Yeah.

And something he said, like, throughout his senior year was he just wanted to make us so proud of his senior work.

And, like, him giving that speech was, like, the epitome of him making us proud.

Betsy He had all these other friends across campus that he had made in his years here. He decided to join the juggling club, and— the juggling club all came. They brought all the juggling stuff. They were outside teaching people how to juggle. And this is, like, a kid who didn’t really talk.

Ashley Yeah. And he just made such connections, not just with his peer mentors and his fellow students—

Tim Yeah…

Betsy but across campus.

Ashley If anyone out there is listening, and they’re even slightly considering being a peer mentor or having their student at home apply to join Terp Succeed, do it. It’s a great, great experience for everyone involved.

I think it really changes people and how they view the world around them.

Precious I hope that if anyone is, like, expecting to be, like, if you’re, like, disabled, and you think that you cannot do this, I promise you, I really, really promise you that don’t put yourself down. Make sure like you do it, and if you cannot do it, don’t, don’t, don’t, like, give up on yourself.

Keep pushing, and maybe one day you can get there. So yeah.

Tim Great job, everybody.

Okay, TerpsEXCEED is now in its fourth year. The program just received its first federal TPSID grant, or Transition and Post-Secondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities, recognition that what’s been built here is a national model worth replicating. And last year, the program was written into the Maryland State budget.

Still, the three coordinators who run it, Betsy, Amy, and Meredith, none of them are full-time on this program. Coming up, the director of TerpsEXCEED, Amy D’Agati, on what it took to build this program at a place that for a long time wasn’t sure that it wanted it. And inside the peer mentor certification class, where every semester about half the students who walk in have never known anyone with a disability.

We’ll be back after a quick break.

This episode is brought to you by Think Higher, Think College, a national public awareness campaign changing expectations for what’s possible after high school for students with intellectual disability. The campaign asks a simple but powerful question: What if every young adult with intellectual disability saw college as an option?

Think Higher, Think College shares resources for families, educators, and higher ed leaders, highlights the real benefits of inclusive college programs, and offers tools to help spread the message that college is possible. With more than 300 programs across 49 states and thousands of students already enrolled, the movement is growing.

Learn more and get involved at thinkhighered.net.

Amy D’Agati is the founding director of TerpsEXCEED. She built the program from nothing starting in 2021. When we sat down together, I asked her the question everyone building something new eventually faces: How do you design a program for people who’ve never had access to this kind of institution before?

Her answer surprised me.

Amy At no point did anybody say no. At no point did anybody say why even. They kind of said, “Oh, how do we do this?” You know? And my whole focus throughout was, well, how has it already happened? Like, I don’t wanna create a siloed program that goes alongside everything else. So how are your other non-traditional academic units formed?

Oh, they sit in the Office of Extended Studies. And I go, “Oh, okay. Well, let’s do that.” And so anybody would have a suggestion, and I would just say, “How is that already done?” And then we would align it with that, and if there were some adjustments that needed to be made, we would. But they were like, “Well, let’s just do it the way we already do it.”

You know? And they would say, “Do you want, like, a special, off-campus apartment kind of thing that they would live in?” And then I said, “Well, what do most freshmen do?” And then they were like, “Yeah, that was dumb. No, they just wanna live in the dorms.” And, like, right away they were like, “Well, then they should just live in the dorms like every other freshman.”

Tim That question, what do most freshmen do, turns out to be the design principle of the entire program. Not what does a student with a disability need, but what does a student need, full stop. Four years in, she’s watching that philosophy ripple outward in ways she didn’t predict.

Amy Someone who’s going to med school and now wants to focus on medical care for people with developmental disabilities very specifically, or a dentist who, in dental school and is thinking, like, twice a month we’ll have, you know, one day that they will serve patients with IDD and autism because they were, you know, change the lighting and the, you know, make it sensory more appealing for somebody to come in and have dental work done, ’cause that’s such a tough thing.

So if we can do it here, we can do it at any other school. I swear we can, so that’s our goal.

Tim The Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center at the University of Maryland, a Thursday morning in November, a week before Thanksgiving break, about 100 students are packed into a lecture hall for the last class meeting of the peer mentor certification course.

They’ve spent the semester learning how to go to class with someone, how to ask questions that open thinking instead of close it, how to model a skill, how to stay in the room when someone is in a crisis. Today, they’re presenting back what they’ve learned.

Peer Mentor Student But don’t infantilize them. Don’t talk to them like they’re children.

That’s just going to make the whole situation worse. Use I statements and make sure you’re willing to take the blame in any situation if, like, you do properly have it. Don’t try to avoid it, especially since you’re their mentors. And ultimately, make sure to take yourself and your points and the Turk Succeed students’ points in, like, equal regard.

Tim After the presentations wrap, the lead instructor invites me to say a few words, and after listening all morning, I had one question. The first question I want to ask is about your high school experience. So raise your hand if when you went to high school you ever had a class with a student with an intellectual disability. Like, they were in your class. Okay, so we have how many students who are in this class? In about 100—

Betsy Yeah, ish. Yeah.

Tim In a room of roughly 100 students training to be peer mentors, students who chose this class, who are earning a certification, who spend three hours a week going to class with Terp Succeed students, fewer than half had ever shared a classroom with a person with an intellectual disability before college.

I asked what it was like now.

Peer Mentor Student Being in class with them is pretty much like going to a class, like, with someone, like one of your friends who has the same class as you. It’s pretty much the exact same thing.

Peer Mentor Student Well, I think before I was in this program, when I thought of intellectual disabilities, I really thought of, you know, like Down syndrome.

So going to classes with different students and seeing like, oh, okay, they all have different needs and different strengths, it really kind of helped me to see intellectual disabilities as more than just, you know, just one type of thing. Right.

Peer Mentor Student They wanna do well in class. They wanna try their best, and for each of them it means something a little different.

Like, for some of them, they know what they need to do, like, inside. Like, for different people, they have different ways that they are able to do schoolwork. Like, for example, one of the girls that I’ve worked with, she is really good at technology. Like, she has all these shortcuts on her computer, and I’m like, “You need to, like, hook me up with that ’cause I do not know how to do, like, half of these things you’re doing.”

Tim I’ve been making podcasts about inclusive education for a while, and I know the arguments, I know the research, and I know when students with and without disabilities are educated together, something changes in both of them for the better. Being in a classroom where peer mentors were explaining everything they’ve learned over a semester, I was watching that change happen in real time.

I was there when Betsy heard Ashley’s story about sitting down with Matthew in the dining hall for the first time. I was there when Precious talked about Patrick, and no one had a dry eye in the room. I was there when 100 future doctors, and lawyers, and engineers raised their hands, and fewer than half of them had ever sat next to a person with an intellectual disability in a regular school classroom.

These students didn’t grow up in the same classrooms. They grew up in a world where students like Carly, and Precious, and Matthew were somewhere else in a different building or a different classroom or a different track living a parallel version of the same childhood and youth. And then they came to this campus, and someone said, “This is Carly.

She’s taking a hip hop class at The Clarice. Do you wanna come?” And most of them said yes. TerpsEXCEED is four years old. It has 14 students and 160 plus trained peer mentors, and it just received its first federal TPSID grant. Governor Moore signed a bill in May that put state funding behind it. Amy D’Agati wants a program like this at every university in Maryland within 10 years.

And somewhere on the McKeldin Mall right now, Evan, who knows where to find the juggling club, who rubs Testudo’s nose when finals are coming, is probably giving someone a tour of his campus. Thanks for listening to episode one of our Think College podcast series. This podcast is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education in partnership with Think College at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

If you’d like to learn more about TerpsEXCEED, visit ihehub-umd.org/terps-exceed. And if you want to learn more about inclusive post-secondary programs across the country, visit thinkcollege.net. I’m Tim Villegas. Thanks for listening.