Unlocking College Access for Students with Intellectual Disabilities with Think College ~ 1343

Meg Grigal: I can talk to you for hours, but you walk in the door of a college and see students who have intellectual disability, it’s gonna change what you think is possible.

And seeing someone who learns like you do or has the support needs you have, who’s thriving and doing well and achieving their dreams, I think is so much more motivating than some report. So that’s why the campaign is based around a video, because we wanna plant the seed of: it is possible, and it is happening.

Clare Papay: He was at the front desk of the library. And I just remember walking into the library and him looking up, making eye contact with me, giving me a big wave, greeting me by name, and we had a whole conversation where he was really quite articulate. And it was just such a big change from where he was when he came in, and it was really just him being part of that environment, people having high expectations for him, believing in him.

And he really just grew so much in the time that he was with us.

Tim Villegas: Hi, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about a question a lot of families never think to ask out loud. Can my kid, the one with an intellectual disability, go to college?

Not a program tucked away in a back hallway. College. Dorm rooms, professors, that psychology class that everyone swears is too hard. Turns out the answer surprises just about everyone who hears it.

This is the final episode of our series with Think College, and I’m joined by two people who’ve spent decades turning that answer into a yes. Dr. Meg Grigal, who directs Think College at the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston, and has spent 25-plus years researching the road to college for students with intellectual disability. And Clare Papay, Think College’s senior associate for inclusive postsecondary education, and a co-principal investigator on the national effort behind all of this.

We get into what’s really possible, how families find programs hiding in their own backyard, and why seeing it in person changes everything. Somewhere in here, you’ll also learn Think College’s official policy on who’s allowed to crash a work call. Let’s just say it’s more generous than most workplaces.

Before we meet our guests, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K–12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive. All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Meg Grigal and Clare Papay. Catch you on the other side.

Tim Villegas: Meg Grigal and Clare Papay, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast. Did I do it right?

Meg Grigal: You did. Very well.

Tim Villegas: I don’t know why, but getting people’s names right is really important to me. I think it’s mostly ’cause people butcher my last name, which is Villegas. And I get a lot of Villegas. Villages.

Meg Grigal: Villages. Ooh, that’s a good one. Yeah. I get Grigal, and Grigal.

Tim Villegas: Grigal? Okay.

Meg Grigal: Grigal, yeah. Yep.

Tim Villegas: Interesting.

Clare Papay: I think that’s how my phone reads out your last name.

Meg Grigal: Grigal?

Clare Papay: Grigal, yeah. “Meg Grigal said…”

Meg Grigal: I’m okay with that. It actually is a derivative. It’s a Lithuanian name, Grigalius.

Tim Villegas: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Meg Grigal: Which would’ve been, I think, a little fancier. Meg Grigalius sounds very fancy.

Tim Villegas: That’s very fancy. Yeah.

Meg Grigal: That’s very fancy. I think they got off the boat and they shortened it.

Tim Villegas: Welcome to you both. We’re gonna talk about inclusive postsecondary education, specifically Think College, and how Think College supports families in making good choices for their loved ones and children, stuff like that.

And why don’t we start— I do have an opening question, but if you could just tell our audience what your role is at Think College, I think that would be helpful. Clare, you can start ’cause you’re on my left.

Clare Papay: Oh, absolutely. All right. Usually we do it the other way around, but I love it. We’re going off script already. So what is my role at Think College? My official job title is Senior Associate for Inclusive Postsecondary Education. Think College is based at the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston. I always like to give the caveat, though, that our whole team works remotely, so we’re all across the country. So I’m not in Boston. I’ve never lived there. I’m in Pennsylvania.

So I work really closely with Meg on all things Think College. She’s gonna introduce herself in a second. But I’ve been in this role for almost 10 years now.

Tim Villegas: Oh, wow. Wonderful.

Meg Grigal: Hi, I’m Meg Grigal. I direct Think College at the ICI. As Clare mentioned, we’re based at UMass Boston. I also don’t live in Boston and never have. I live in Maryland, and always have since I started. I started working with Think College when we created it in 2008, through a couple of grant initiatives with my partner at the time, Debra Hart, who did live and work in Boston. Sadly, she passed away two years ago.

But as we launched Think College, I think we wore a lot of different hats, so it really depends on who you’re asking about. We have projects, and we all have roles on projects, and then we have university names. We’re not super into titles. But when it comes to Think College, I’m currently the director, and then I’m the PI on some of our projects that are funded by grants. So that’s who I am.

Tim Villegas: And correct me if I’m wrong, but Think College just received another round of funding, is that correct?

Meg Grigal: To be the National Coordinating Center, yeah. We began our work as the National Coordinating Center for a federally funded initiative called the Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities, which is known in our field as the TPSID. It’s a model demonstration program funded by the Office of Postsecondary Education, and it started in 2010. And we have served as the coordinating center since 2010.

So we received our fourth grant to support our work as that center in October of 2025, and it was a really big deal, and we were really thrilled to keep doing this work and building this field, because the NCC has been a huge driver for change, both at the federal level, at the state level, at the program level, and it has helped almost 6,000 college students with intellectual disability find their path to and through college.

Tim Villegas: That’s amazing. That’s huge impact.

Meg Grigal: Yeah. It’s pretty darn cool, honestly. It’s a wonderful program and we’re thrilled to be a part of it. And the TPSIDs themselves, which are the colleges and universities that have applied for funding to develop a program or expand a program, they’re doing the bulk of the work when it comes to being change agents in these colleges and universities.

They’re partnering with school systems, they’re partnering with state agencies, they’re helping train faculty, they’re building cohorts of peer mentors, they’re building employment opportunities for these students. So the TPSIDs themselves are really the change agent at the local level, and also inspiring other colleges and universities to do the same, whether they’re grant-funded or not.

The TPSID initiative has really led to huge expansion over the past 15 years. The numbers of inclusive higher education opportunities for people with intellectual disability have grown from what we knew in 2009. There were 149 programs. Now there’s, I think, 351 at our last count. And that’s pretty quick change for a stoic system like higher ed that can take a long time to change and grow.

Tim Villegas: And each university has unique barriers. I don’t know the right word. Unique barriers or needs.

Meg Grigal: Yeah. They all have their own climate and context. They’re proud of certain things. If they’re a community college, they’re proud of their role in the community to empower people to join the workforce. If they’re an Ivy League institution, they’re proud of the rigor and the impact that they have. So everybody brings different gems to the table. Every university has some striking capacity to contribute to society’s growth, but they’re all different.

Which isn’t any different than if you don’t have an intellectual disability. You wanna find a college that is a good match for you.

Tim Villegas: Yes. I have one child in college and a sophomore in high school that we are looking at colleges for right now.

Meg Grigal: Oh.

Tim Villegas: And that is— woo, it’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Meg Grigal: It is.

Tim Villegas: I also wanted to ask before we get into my questions— and if you don’t wanna talk about this, it’s totally fine and we can cut it. With the current administration’s education budget that was most recently proposed, does that affect your funding at all?

Meg Grigal: At the moment, the administration’s budget has supported the TPSID initiative at flat funding, maintaining the funding that we’ve been at, which is 13.8 million for the initiative. Not for us, but for the full initiative. That’s all the almost 30 college and university program grants and the National Coordinating Center.

So right now the initiative has been retained in the administration budget. We haven’t seen the budget’s appropriations—that just went, I think, this month, for Congress’s budget. What I will say is we’ve been funded since 2010, the initiative, not just us, the whole initiative. And it has been consistently bipartisan supported from the beginning.

So we have seen— because I think the impact of education and the possibility for people with disabilities to have better lives through education is something, our experience is that most people can get behind it. And ultimately, because the outcomes of these programs allow people with intellectual disabilities to leave college and enter the workforce in a much more prepared way, and our data support that, it’s not just a short-term impact, there’s a long-term impact.

So right now we are hopeful to retain that.

Tim Villegas: That’s great. Okay, great. Wonderful. I’m happy to hear that. Happy to hear that.

Okay. So now let’s get into my questions. And I want to do a little thought experiment. Imagine you’re sitting with some friends, maybe out for dinner, and one of the friends is like, “Yeah, so my friend’s daughter has an intellectual disability and they’re in high school, and she keeps talking about wanting to go to college. And when I heard my friend talking about this, I was like, I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

And I’ll make it even more specific. I live in Georgia, if y’all know that—listeners know that. They wanna go to Georgia Tech, okay? Georgia Tech historically is hard to get into. So I’m listening to my friend, and her daughter, who has an intellectual disability, wants to go to Georgia Tech. That’s not possible, right? How is that possible?

And I imagine that situation happens all the time, right? A learner wants to go to college. They have an intellectual disability, and the family is like, “I don’t see how that’s possible.” So what do you want people to know about what’s possible for students with intellectual disabilities in going to college?

Meg Grigal: Do you wanna take that one, Clare?

Clare Papay: Sure. I think what you described there, Tim, is absolute best case scenario. It sounds like we’ve got a young adult here who knows what they want. They’ve heard about college, which is great, so we’ve gotten past that first hurdle of just them knowing that college is a possibility, which is wonderful. One of the biggest barriers we find is that oftentimes educators just aren’t talking to these students about the possibility of college, so they just don’t know that it’s possible.

But we’ve got here this young adult. They know about college. They’ve got an awareness that that’s a path for them. They’re very motivated. And they’ve even gotten as far as identifying a college that might be a place that they would like to go, and maybe that’s because they’ve had a family member or a friend who’s gone on to Georgia Tech.

So I think I would be really excited to be at this dinner party with this person. And I would say, “Great, let’s pull up the Think College website right away.” We’d be looking at the college search directory that we have on thinkcollege.net, and we’d be looking to see, is Georgia Tech in there? Does Georgia Tech have a program that is for students with intellectual disability? They do? Great. Okay, let’s go look more into that.

That’s, I think, a really exciting place to be starting from. Oftentimes that’s not the case, that we have these young folks who know about college and know where they want to go. Often we’re starting in a place of more kind of lack of awareness and lack of knowledge. But this one’s an easy problem to solve. Could you send this family to us? Because I think we could help them.

Tim Villegas: Absolutely. 100%. You bring up a really good point, that just the awareness that such programs or options exist is difficult. And I know that Think College has made a very concerted effort over the last few years, especially with the campaign of Think Higher Ed, is that right?

Meg Grigal: Think Higher, Think College is the campaign, and thinkhighered.net is our campaign website.

Tim Villegas: Think Higher, yes. So, a very concerted effort for communications and everything to let people know. What are still some barriers for that message to keep spreading?

Meg Grigal: Oh, sometimes it’s access. I think parents often get their expectations for their child from the professionals they interact with. And if those professionals—whether they are teachers or counselors or therapists or even doctors—if those individuals who surround them don’t know what’s out there, don’t know it’s possible, sometimes it’s that little missing link.

So it’s getting to them through other strategies that allow them to know it’s possible. Is it a good match for their child? To be determined. Are they ready to support it? To be determined. But even knowing that it is an option on the table is still not a default when you’re sitting down in a special education IEP meeting, when you’re sitting at an IPE meeting with your VR counselor. You’re not always getting information about the full range of options.

So the reason we did the campaign was to give— there is a four-minute campaign video that shows students with intellectual disability at colleges and universities all over the country. Real college students, real college professors, real college presidents and chancellors and administrators saying, “This is what it looks like. This is how it’s changing us at the student level, the college level, the community level, and it is possible.”

So just creating— ’cause seeing is believing. I can talk to you for hours, but you walk in the door of a college and see students who have intellectual disability, it’s gonna change what you think is possible. And seeing someone who learns like you do or has the support needs you have, who’s thriving and doing well and achieving their dreams, I think is so much more motivating than some report. So that’s why the campaign is based around a video, because we wanna plant the seed of: it is possible, and it is happening.

Tim Villegas: Absolutely. It is happening. And I think this might be a good spot for me to just interject that this is the last episode of a series that we’ve collaborated on with Think College about inclusive postsecondary education. I was able to visit TerpsEXCEED at the University of Maryland, and then also visit the Georgia IDEAL program at Georgia State University.

And in both of those instances, seeing learners with disabilities, some with intellectual disabilities, living, working, thriving on campus—it’s such a pleasure to be able to actually be there and see it and experience it. And so if you’re listening and you’re like, “Oh, I’d really like to see this myself,” is that something that people can just find on Think College, and if a program is local they can go tour and talk to people?

Meg Grigal: Yeah, absolutely. Clare mentioned our Think College program search directory, which is a voluntary directory. People don’t have to give us information, but we’ve created it really for the primary purpose of supporting students and families to know what’s in their backyard, what’s around, what are the components. So they could go there and do a search by state or region. They could do a search by, does it provide housing? It gives you the basics of it.

But your suggestion of then going is always our number two strategy. You can look at something online, but you’re never gonna get a feel for it. And you’re doing the college search right now. I’m sure your children looked at colleges online and are like, “Oh, I love that.” And then they got there and, “Eh, this isn’t for me.”

So yeah, many programs have open houses. Certainly reaching out and talking to a director or a coordinator and saying, “Hey, could we come for a visit?” because they’re interested in a good match too. They want students to come there that they are the right choice for, and not every college is the right choice, whether you have a disability or not.

Tim Villegas: True. Yeah.

Meg Grigal: Yeah. You have to get there and see it and talk to people to know if it’s a good match for you.

Tim Villegas: Clare, did you have anything to add?

Clare Papay: I also think that’s a really good suggestion for educators as well. So not just the students and families, but for educators to have an idea of what these college programs look like. If you’re an educator, as Meg was saying for students and families, using the directory—educators could also use our directory, find programs that are local to them, reach out, see if they’re having open houses, contact their directors, see if they would be interested in having you come visit. And just go and spend some time there and get a sense of the people that are working there, the kinds of students that are enrolled.

It can really be a great way to build out your own knowledge about what’s available, so that you can help guide students towards those programs as well.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, absolutely. And the other program that we’ve highlighted in this series is at UC Davis, the Redwood SEED Scholars. Didn’t have the budget to get to California, but if we did, absolutely. I know that Beth Foraker is doing a fantastic job out there. And the stories that she has told, along with the students that we talked to, it just seems fantastic.

So I encourage everyone to look in their backyard and figure out a way to visit an inclusive postsecondary program.

After the break, Meg and Clare share the stories that stuck with them, students who blew right past everyone’s expectations, plus why real friendships can’t be assigned, and the concrete moves educators can make to get the word out.

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Tim Villegas: As we’ve been thinking about particular IPSEs that maybe we have visited, is there any story that comes to mind about one of those programs that would be beneficial for our listeners and viewers, to get a picture of what it’s like?

Meg Grigal: Clare actually ran a program.

Clare Papay: Yeah, I was just thinking back to some of the students who were enrolled before my time here at Think College. Thinking back to those couple years where I was privileged to be running a program that brought students with intellectual disability to the university that I worked at.

And it was just such an incredible experience to be part of the interview process, seeing students as they are coming out of high school, making the decisions around who this would be the best fit for, and then having them enroll in the program and spend a couple of years with us and seeing how much they grew through that time.

So I think of one young man who, when he came for his interview, barely spoke at all. Very pleasant young man, very agreeable, lots of smiles. He said a lot of very affirming things, a lot of kind of one-word responses to our questions. And he seemed like somebody that we could take a chance on, and he would be a good fit. And so he was accepted into the program, and still very quiet. He didn’t really initiate conversation with you.

But then I remember, in his second year in the program, walking into the library—he was doing an internship in the library. He was at the front desk of the library. And I just remember walking into the library and him looking up, making eye contact with me, giving me a big wave, greeting me by name, and we had a whole conversation where he was really quite articulate. And it was just such a big change from where he was when he came in, and it was really just him being part of that environment, people having high expectations for him, believing in him. And he really just grew so much in the time that he was with us.

And that’s really just one example. It’s the kind of thing that would happen over and over. I think about another student, a young woman with Down syndrome. She had done another college program before she came to our program, so she was a lifelong learner, very passionate about her studies. We ended up, after she completed our program, just kinda having to kick her out and tell her, “You need to go on and find work now. It’s time for you to wrap up your studies.” Just one of those perpetual students.

But I remember she wanted to take a psychology class, and so we reached out to the professor for that class, and he was a full professor, tenured at the university. He’d been there for a very long time. And he said, “Okay. Sure, she can take the class, but I’m not making any changes.” And we’re like, “Okay, that’s not exactly how it works when you have a student with a disability enrolled, but we’ll see what we can do here.”

She enrolled in the class. She initiated finding supports within that class herself. She approached a peer to take notes for her. We didn’t have to do any of that. She really had figured out how this whole accommodations and supports thing worked for her. So she got her own note-taker.

And actually, we had enrolled her in that class for audit, so she didn’t have to take any of the tests or anything like that. But she really wanted to. This was early days of our program, so we were really just learning how all these things worked and how it was gonna work to have the students in the classes. But she took the first midterm exam, and she got something like a 69. And I remember the professor saying that she had scored higher than many of the other undergraduate students who were in the class.

And it really changed his whole perspective on what a student with an intellectual disability could achieve, and how his teaching could be adapted a little bit. And she just blew our expectations out of the water in terms of her ability to learn and be part of that class and be motivated. So many stories like that, where students just, when given the opportunity, exceed our expectations over and over.

Tim Villegas: Thank you. Thanks for sharing that, Clare. And I just want to say, I think some of our listeners and viewers may hear that story and say, “That sounds a lot like what happens in K–12 general education settings,” right?

Clare Papay: Yes, exactly.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. High expectations. The educator is like, “This kid is never gonna get what I’m teaching. They’re just not.” Or, “I’m not gonna do anything different for this child.” But somehow they just blow right past those expectations and rise to the occasion and show that they are as much of a learner as anyone else in that classroom.

That is why we love Think College, because the mission is the same, right? Access to education, access to what everyone else has access to. And a lot of times those low expectations and biases against learners with disabilities, it doesn’t do anyone any good, it doesn’t give anyone any favors, to do that.

Clare Papay: Yeah, it’s so true. And I think it’s also okay if a student goes and tries to do something and they don’t hit the mark, because that’s how everyone else learns in college. You try some things and you’re great at it. You try some things and you’re okay. You try some things and it doesn’t go well.

Meg Grigal: And it’s also providing them the opportunity to take risks and grow from those risks. We always talk about how mistakes are just another way of learning, but the pathway for people with intellectual disabilities through K–12 often prevents them from setting themselves up in a place where they might take a risk and suffer a consequence—either that consequence is I didn’t succeed, or I felt bad for a little bit, or I had to try something different or learn a new strategy.

So college is also a place where you still have a support structure, you still have a safety net. You’re not off on your own, and colleges are really used to 18-year-olds who’ve never lived away from home.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Meg Grigal: So whether you are 19 or 20 or 24, if this is your first time to try out being an adult learner, the structure in college is prepared for that.

I remember being at a planning meeting for a program that was brand new in a state, and we were meeting with residential services about how the students would get their dorm rooms and how they would get their roommates assigned, and what we had to change in the backend of the system ’cause their coding would be a little different. And then there was the whole discussion of, these students might have needs, like they might need support in learning how to do their laundry. And the residential services staff just giggled. They said, “You think these students are the only ones who’ve never done laundry before? We are so accustomed to this. We have systems in place. The RAs have systems.”

So again, college is a place where many people are allowed to grow up. And that maturing that Clare just talked about, the student feeling more confident and comfortable being articulate or being out engaging—that is a soft skill, and I have heard that story so many times. Because we can measure employment, we can measure course access, we can measure campus engagement in the activities, but it’s that internal growth.

And you have college-age kids. I guarantee you, the first one goes to college at 18, and when they come back at 22 they will be a different human being. And it’s that growth cycle that college allows for that is— it’s hard to articulate, but you know it when you see it, ’cause you’re like, “Oh my goodness.”

And I have a 19-year-old now in college, and even in the two years that he’s been there, the growth and change is evident. So I think it’s really important to allow for not just successes, but growth in whatever that looks like for the individual.

Tim Villegas: Yes, and that growth can be messy sometimes.

Meg Grigal: Yes. And that’s okay.

Tim Villegas: Yes. And I’m speaking from experience with my own college-age child.

Meg Grigal: With you, my friend.

Tim Villegas: And the other thing I wanted to mention, which also is a parallel to K–12 and being in inclusive settings, is friendships. So I just wanna highlight specifically University of Maryland, because when I was there, one of the things that was very evident was the peer mentors—the support that the program gave the peer mentors, and the kinds of relationships that were just on display and that I observed when I was on campus, and just how robust that support is for these peer mentors.

And one of the things I talked about with Amy and Betsy at University of Maryland was, how do you navigate that kind of helper/helpee dynamic that can sometimes happen, where it’s like, “I’m only here because I have to be,” or whatever. But what was so evident about the program that they had with the peer mentors is that everyone seemed to just want to be there, right? And even though they may have received some sort of credit or something that contributed to their education, friendships were allowed to happen organically.

That, I think, is one of the huge benefits of a program like that, and it’s for anyone. It happened to me when I went to college, right?

Meg Grigal: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: I lived in the dorms, and those friendships that I created in college are my lifelong friends. The friends that I still talk to today, 20 or 30 years later, right? So that, I think, is such a huge benefit, that you just aren’t going to have that opportunity unless you are in an environment where you are living and working and playing in an environment where there are non-disabled peers.

Meg Grigal: Yeah. Access is so different, and exposure to people who are different than you is a hallmark of the college experience for everybody. You move out of state or you move just to a different place, and you’re gonna meet people from different walks of life who didn’t grow up the way you did.

But for the peer mentors, I think what I really love about the dynamic is there’s a level playing field. We are equals. We are both students. I may need some support in a certain area, and you may be there to support me, but you can’t force the friendship. There are certainly college students with intellectual disability and peer mentors who didn’t become lifelong friends. And there’s some that did. Just because they’re working together doesn’t mean they’re gonna be friends. But the exposure allows for friendships to happen if they’re gonna happen, because there’s a place to connect, and it isn’t a programmed place necessarily.

So I think it’s amazing. I love TerpsEXCEED’s peer mentor program. I love that they really reach out to the business school and the sports teams. They really look at the social structures of college, and there are representatives from each social network on that campus as part of their peer mentor cohort. Which I think is really important, because social clout in college happens, and if you’re walking into the dining hall with your peer mentor and they happen to be on the football team, there’s an automatic in.

I would need that in. I wasn’t cool in college. I wish I had a friend who had some social clout. But I think the way they approach it—and I’m sure it’s similar in many other places—you’re bringing in people who… What we’ve heard from peers is they learn so much about themselves. They become so much more aware, not just of intellectual disability and what it means scientifically, but of who these humans are, and that they’re really not that different from them, and they really just want the same things. They wanna have a good time, they wanna learn something, they want a better life when they leave college.

And I think that allows them to go, “We’re really the same here. Oh, you need a little support to help this part of your journey? That’s great.” So the growth we’ve seen both interpersonally, but also the research base supports it: having people with intellectual disabilities on college campuses leads their college peers to feel like they become better people, and allows their faculty to feel like they’ve become better teachers. I don’t know too many other systems change programs that have actually had that kind of broad impact.

Clare Papay: Yeah, I think the peer mentoring aspect of programs has really been something that’s been a cool development through inclusive postsecondary education programs. I think a lot of programs started with a heavy focus on peer mentoring because they just didn’t have the money to pay staff, to be honest. So it was a dual purpose, right? We don’t have a lot of funding here to pay staff, but we know that these students need a lot of extra support, so let’s pull in some peers. So that might have been where some of it started from.

But like Meg was saying, it’s really been an important aspect as well in how the students are supported and how they are included in the college or university, with very reciprocal benefits. Many of the peer mentors—you were talking, Tim, about this sort of dynamic where the mentors have to be there, but a lot of these peer mentors, they don’t have to be there. They don’t have to sign up to be a peer mentor. Some of them might be doing it as part of a class they’re taking, or maybe it’s a work study, but a lot of them are really volunteering.

And we see programs that have more than 100 mentors every semester for just a handful of students. So it becomes something that’s really an important part of that campus, that you can get involved with the peer mentoring. I think it has a lot of benefits for the mentors themselves. Anytime you get the chance to talk to students and their mentors, they’ll say, “We’re helping each other here. He’s helping me with this, but there’s also something else that I’m getting in return.”

And so we do see these friendships forming, and we hear stories of students with intellectual disability graduating and going on to live in an apartment with a friend that they made who’s not a person with an intellectual disability, and those kinds of friendships continuing even after they graduate.

And then another thing that we hear about is, those students that have the opportunity to be a peer mentor in college—we’re seeing this kind of cool pipeline now where they’re going on to work in inclusive postsecondary education programs, and we’re seeing them being the folks that are stepping into some of the coordinator roles and then the director roles. So these people coming through this peer mentoring background—sometimes it changes the career trajectory that they think they’re on, and it’s cool to see people coming from that background now and working in inclusive postsecondary education as well.

Tim Villegas: I’m sorry, I had to mute ’cause my dog was barking. He’s still barking.

Meg Grigal: That’s okay.

Tim Villegas: He’s still barking.

Meg Grigal: At Think College, we always welcome dogs and babies on our calls.

Clare Papay: And cats.

Meg Grigal: Cats are allowed to walk by at any time. We always have cats too. But yeah, all of our folks work from home, so we are always very happy to have babies and children join our calls, dogs and cats.

Tim Villegas: That’s great.

Meg Grigal: We don’t have too many spouses join. I guess maybe—

Clare Papay: Oh, my spouse— well, theirs just delivers food.

Meg Grigal: That’s true, my spouse does deliver food, ’cause I’m chained to my desk.

Tim Villegas: That is really funny. Yeah. My wife is a nurse, so she actually has to go in.

Meg Grigal: Oh, okay.

Tim Villegas: Yes. So I am the remote worker in our family.

But as we’re wrapping up, I’d love for you to give some practical advice to educators on how to spread the word about college options for their students.

Clare Papay: I will say, that’s what we’re here for. So come visit us at thinkcollege.net. We have all the resources you need. Actually, if you head to our Think Higher, Think College website, which has a slightly different address—that is thinkhighered.net. It is what we call a microsite, so it’s just a very targeted site. If this whole idea of inclusive postsecondary education is new to you, the thinkhighered.net website is the place to go. It’s got just very targeted resources for beginners in this area. So we have a whole series of resources that are just for educators.

But some of the things that we’ve already talked about: getting to know the programs that are out there in your area, visiting them, getting a sense of the kinds of students and the kinds of opportunities they’re offering. So doing your homework first as an educator is really important. You have to build up your own knowledge so that you can present opportunities to students and then help them prepare for college.

Once you’ve got that awareness, talking with all of your colleagues, making sure everybody at your school knows that college is an option for students with intellectual disability. The more people who know about this, the more likely it is that we’re going to be talking about those opportunities with students, and we’ll get past that kind of barrier of a lack of awareness.

So it’s important that school counselors know, even if they’re not typically working with students with intellectual disability. We want them to be. We want those school counselors to be talking about college with students with intellectual disability as well. Really everybody who works in a school, especially if they’re involved in transition services for students with disabilities, needs to be aware that this is a possibility.

And then working with students and families to help build it into IEPs, making it part of transition planning, considering college. And when we say college, we’re really talking about the full range of postsecondary education opportunities. So we’re not talking about a university for everybody, but looking at all the different options that are out there—community colleges, technical colleges, any kind of further learning that you can do after you leave high school should be considered as part of a student’s transition planning.

So yeah, Meg, it looked like you were gonna jump in, so I’ll hand it over to you.

Meg Grigal: You brought to mind school counselors, who often know what regular colleges are available, but they don’t know about these. When you have a college night, make sure you’re inviting colleges and universities that enroll people with intellectual disability. When you have a transition fair, don’t just invite VR and state IDD agencies and community rehab providers—invite colleges and universities who enroll people with intellectual disability. When you have a professional development day and you’re talking about employment and service structures, have a session on college.

When Clare talked about our website—show the four-minute video at a faculty meeting. The chair of the special ed department or the vice principal can say, “You know what? Four minutes. We’re gonna watch this and talk about it.” But the more people use these resources to engage, the more likely they’re gonna make their way into a planning meeting or a conversation with a parent. ‘Cause the educators, if they don’t feel confident about it or comfortable, they’re less likely to share it.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. You’ve given me an idea, and I’m going to—in honor of IPSE Day—I am going to put it on my to-do list to make sure that the school counselors at my children’s high school know about Think College, and specifically the programs in Georgia.

Because I’m just remembering, again, I have high school students who live with me. Children. And I get so many— they’re just random—

Meg Grigal: “High school students who live with you.”

Tim Villegas: Just bring ’em on. Just come on. Yep. We got lots of room. No, I’m just kidding.

The amount of messages that we get from the high school saying, “Such and such college will be here on this day from this time to this time, and make sure your student, if they’re interested”— but I never, ever, ever hear about any sort of inclusive postsecondary programs, right?

Meg Grigal: You’re not alone.

Tim Villegas: So—

Meg Grigal: Thank you for planting the seed.

Tim Villegas: Yes, I am gonna do that. And so if you’re listening or watching this and you’re like, “That’s a good idea. I think I’m gonna try that for my local high school or my local school district”— I think this is the sign. This is the sign that you go ahead and do that, ’cause I think that is another way we can really spread the word about these kinds of options.

Meg Grigal: I love that.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Why don’t you just one more time give the URL for both of the sites, and then we’ll go on to the mystery question.

Meg Grigal: Oh, okay. www.thinkcollege.net is our home site for Think College. And for the public awareness campaign, Think Higher, Think College is thinkhighered.net. And we would love for people to come.

And you mentioned IPSE Day. Can we give a plug for IPSE Day?

Tim Villegas: Yes. This will air after IPSE Day, but—

Meg Grigal: Oh, okay.

Tim Villegas: —you can absolutely go ahead and say it, because who knows, the life cycle of a podcast is infinite.

Clare Papay: That’s very true. You can put in a plug for IPSE Day 2027.

Meg Grigal: There you go. Yeah, there you go. So Inclusive Postsecondary Education Day is May 1st. I think it was started by a regional alliance, and Think College asked if we could pick it up, so the past three or four years we’ve been really celebrating IPSE Day. And it is just a time for everybody to say why they believe college should be possible for people with intellectual disability. And we have had four-year-olds tell us why they think college is possible, and teachers, and parents, and faculty members, and college presidents, and we’ve had a couple governors announce that IPSE Day is being celebrated and honored in their state.

And every single year it gets bigger. Last year we had our first international celebrant. Trinity College in Dublin celebrated IPSE Day, ’cause they have the TCPID program. And we just hope every year it gets bigger. So if you’ve never heard of IPSE Day, come to our website, look up IPSE Day. Follow us on social media, because it is worth celebrating.

Tim Villegas: Hey, and a big shout-out to Becky Lazo, because I know how hard she works for Think College.

Meg Grigal: She’s the best.

Tim Villegas: A fellow communicator. She’s the best. She’s the best. Yeah.

We’d just been talking about getting the word out to school counselors, college nights, transition fairs, and I even added a new item to my own to-do list. But before we wrap up, there’s one more thing I wanna get to.

All right. So are you familiar with the mystery question? The mystery question is a question I always ask at the end of our interviews.

Meg Grigal: Okay.

Tim Villegas: There’s a stack of cards of random questions that I wrote a very long time ago, and I pick a card and we all answer the question. Okay?

Meg Grigal: Yep. Okay.

Tim Villegas: All right. Easy enough. The mystery question for today is: what’s another podcast you listen to or watch, and why? So assuming you already are well-versed in the Think Inclusive podcast episode list of all the topics and guests, what’s another podcast you listen to or watch, and why? So that is the question. See if I can— That’s my chicken scratch right there for you guys.

Meg Grigal: I like it. Okay. I know what Clare’s is. I can’t wait for her to give hers.

Tim Villegas: Do you?

Meg Grigal: I know exactly what hers is.

Tim Villegas: Okay. All right. Clare?

Clare Papay: Yeah, I think so. Okay, so I’ll start with my why, because podcasts are my escape, so I listen to no podcasts related to my work. I’ll say that.

Tim Villegas: And that’s fine. Yeah, all podcasts are welcome.

Clare Papay: Podcasts are my fun time. They’re what’s in my ear when I’m out walking every day. For the last five or six years, my number one podcast has been The Hamilcast, which is a podcast all about Hamilton. And it’s been a fascinating behind-the-scenes about Hamilton, the musical, and all the people that are involved—the cast, the creatives, all the folks that it takes to make the musical.

It just wrapped, though. It ended in January, and so I got to be at a fun celebration party with fellow listeners as well as some of the—

Tim Villegas: That’s amazing.

Clare Papay: —cast and folks. So yeah, that has been my number one podcast.

Tim Villegas: That’s so good. Yeah, that’s great. I love it. The Hamilcast. Yes. We’re big fans of the Hamilton musical here in the household.

Clare Papay: Oh, there’s 10 years of that podcast that you can listen to, and it is fascinating. I highly recommend it.

Tim Villegas: Oh, gosh, yeah.

Meg Grigal: Talk about having an infinite lifespan.

Tim Villegas: I know, right? Wow. Yeah, that’s great.

Meg Grigal: That’s awesome.

Tim Villegas: Okay. All right. How about you, Meg?

Meg Grigal: I am not a huge podcast listener. But there’s one I became really engaged in for quite a while, and that was the Ten Percent Happier one.

Tim Villegas: Oh, Dan Harris. Yes.

Meg Grigal: Yeah. And I would learn something. They were always just amazing minds and amazing thoughts, and I would do it on my after-work walk. So I try to walk a couple miles every day after work. It was just a place for me— I might learn a new strategy, I just might hear a good story, something to reflect on as a human being. But the people they brought in were always just incredibly smart and engaging.

And I don’t know, I just love having other people plant seeds in my mind of things I can learn more about. So for me, that was just awesome. But my daughter just told me I should listen to the Amy Poehler podcast.

Clare Papay: Oh, I love that.

Tim Villegas: I hear that one’s really good.

Clare Papay: I’ve heard that’s really— yes. Good Hang with Amy Poehler. That has started filling my gap since there’s no new Hamilcast episodes. I’ve been listening to Good Hang.

Meg Grigal: So that’s on my list. That’s on my watch list, or to be read. I’m a massive audiobook person. I need to switch to podcasts. What about you, Tim?

Tim Villegas: I actually have not been listening to as many podcasts as I usually do. Over the last few years it’s been lots of news, opinion, music podcasts, science podcasts, so many different kinds of podcasts. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of audiobooks ’cause I’m trying to get through— I have a TBR list like a mile high, so I’m trying to get through everything.

But Clare, you reminded me, there’s some podcasts that have this interactive element, where you go to a live stream, or you donate money, or you engage in a different way than just listening to the podcast. And so my wife and I have been listening— this podcast is probably over a decade old, but it’s called The Popcast with Knox and Jamie, and they’re both Southerners, so Alabama, Tennessee. It’s just a pop culture podcast, and it’s super fun. It’s really an easy listen. There’s a lot of community engagement, and their tagline is, “Educating you on things that entertain but do not matter.”

Clare Papay: Oh, love it.

Meg Grigal: So what is it called again?

Tim Villegas: It’s called The Popcast with Knox and Jamie.

Meg Grigal: Popcast. All right. Yes. I’m gonna put that on my to-be-listened-to list.

Tim Villegas: It is super fun. They’re really good at coming up with the themes of the episodes. For instance— this’ll be coming up, we’re coming up to summer eventually—so it’s like the No’s of Summer. So they’re gonna talk about all the things about summer that people don’t like.

Meg Grigal: Oh. The No’s of Summer. That’s a no. Oh, that’s so funny.

Tim Villegas: So that’s just one example. Super fun. Highly recommend, if people want to have something fun to listen to. So there you go.

Meg Grigal: I like it.

Tim Villegas: All right. There we go. We did it. We did the mystery question.

Meg Grigal: We did.

Clare Papay: Yeah. This might be the first time someone’s asked me a mystery question that I actually felt happy to answer. I’m not big on icebreakers or those kinds of things.

Tim Villegas: Fate decided. All right. It was the right one. That’s why it’s a mystery. It’s a mystery for everyone.

Clare Papay: Yeah. Breathe a sigh of relief on that one.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes. All right. I’m going to sign us off, but don’t click out when I say goodbye, okay?

Meg Grigal: Okay.

Tim Villegas: All right. Meg Grigal and Clare, oh—

Clare Papay: Papay. Papay.

Tim Villegas: I’m gonna try that again. Meg Grigal and Clare Papay, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Clare Papay: Thank you, Tim. It’s been a pleasure.

Meg Grigal: Yeah, it was fun.

Tim Villegas: That was Meg Grigal and Clare Papay. Here’s what I’m taking with me. Meg said something that keeps rattling around in my head: college is a place where people are allowed to grow up. Not just to rack up credits, but to take a risk, miss the mark, and grow from it. And Clare reminded me that when students get the chance, they exceed our expectations over and over again.

So it’s not really a story about college. It’s a story about what we assume is possible, and who we assume it’s possible for.

One practical step for educators: bring the four-minute Think Higher video to your next faculty or department meeting. Four minutes, and then talk about it. Because people who don’t feel confident about this are the ones least likely to mention it to a parent.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, please email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey From Internet, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the Donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere @thinkinclusive.

Thanks for hanging out. And remember, inclusion always works.