I spent four days at the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit last week, mostly in the higher education sessions. I heard from practicioners and specialist running programs at Stanford, South Dakota State University, SUNY Empire State, the College of Staten Island, and the College Autism Network. The following is a very short summary of the pages of notes I took.
Three things kept coming up in different rooms, from different people. They are worth writing down.
1. Support can't wait for a diagnosis
South Dakota State described a program for autistic students that does not ask for documentation. You don't need a formal diagnosis to join. Their disability services office still handles accommodations, and that requires paperwork, but the program itself is open.
South Dakota State
Half to two thirds
of the students they serve would have been missed if the program required a diagnosis.
Across U.S. colleges, 2022
7.4% had a program for autistic students
Most required students to disclose and register. About half charged an extra fee.
Plenty of students are undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or can't afford the evaluation. The part I didn't expect: South Dakota State's students liked that nobody asked them for a diagnosis. Some went on to seek an evaluation afterward, because the program gave them a place to start.
SUNY Empire State, which co-led the Universal Design session with Stanford, took the same idea further. Many of its supports are free and open to anyone, with no disclosure at all. Their first steps cost almost nothing: email templates students can copy when they need to ask for help, a flowchart and FAQs for financial aid, FAQs for every course.
Three tiers, and why the first one matters most
SUNY Empire State framed the case to their leadership in three tiers: support built in for everyone, which reaches most students; targeted help for some; and intensive one-on-one support for a few. Fund the first tier well, and fewer students ever need the most expensive one.
The cockpit story
In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force measured more than 4,000 pilots to design a cockpit for the average pilot. Not one pilot was average on all ten measurements. So they built adjustable seats. The standard of flying the plane stayed the same. The fit changed.
If you locate the problem in the student, you design an accommodation. If you locate it in the environment, you build differently from the start.
That is how we built Lunabeam. A student doesn't need a diagnosis to use it, because planning a week and starting a task are skills every eighteen-year-old is still building.
2. The student has to drive, and most have never practiced
"We need your student on the phone"
A Stanford clinician described orientation week. Parents call constantly, and staff keep answering the same way. The disability office, the clinic and residential life all want to hear from the student directly. One panelist mentioned a workbook written for parents whose title says it all: "From manager to consultant."
What students don't know until they arrive
South Dakota State added two things. Professors know nothing about a student beyond an accommodation letter, if there is one. And unless the student signs a release, parents are out of the picture in the academic record.
Someone in the room summed it up as the gap between college capable and college ready. The student can do the work. What's new is running your own week, with nobody checking in.
I think about this a lot. Many students, especially first-generation students, never had anyone help them structure their week in high school. The ones who get through that first year smoothly often had a parent who went to college or a family that could pay for a coach. That is a gap in who gets scaffolding, not a gap in ability.
3. The hardest hours are the ones nobody staffs
I asked a question in one session that I ask myself every day. Staff costs keep rising, and staff are there during sessions and office hours. They aren't there on a Tuesday night when a student is trying to start a paper. How do we help students in those hours?
The answers were mostly apps to try and resource lists to share. That was an honest answer, and it told me the gap is real. SUNY Empire State had the most direct response: they offer executive function support to every student, and they're extending it to employees, because nearly everyone benefits.
On the artificial intelligence (AI) and startups panel I asked the follow-up. The more a tool knows about a student's routines, the better its help, so where do you draw the line on privacy? The panel was clear.
Share the minimum
Only the people who need to know should know. Send an AI tool the least information it needs to do the job, with names and identifying details removed.
Say what the data is for
Tell students plainly what their data is used for, and ask before using it for anything else.
Keep a human in the loop
A student in trouble should reach a person, not be left alone with a chatbot. One panelist described what his team says when someone brings them something bigger than they can handle: we hear you, we see you, and here is a person who can help.
That matches the rules we set for Lunabeam. Students own their accounts and choose what their coaches or families can see. Staff stay in the loop, and the product is there for the six days a week nobody is watching.
What I'm taking back
The College Autism Network made the case that gets a president's attention: recruitment and retention drive most decisions on campus, and it's a lot cheaper to support neurodivergent students well than to start a football team.
The short version
The campuses doing this well build support into the campus instead of making students qualify for it, give students practice running their own week before they have to, and keep a person in the loop for the hours nobody staffs.
Thank you to the Stanford Neurodiversity Project team for putting this together, and to everyone who spent time with me between sessions. If you run a program and any of this sounds familiar, I'd like to compare notes. No pitch, I'm still learning how programs are actually put together.
Sources: sessions and panels at the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit 2026, Stanford University, September 18-21, 2026, including presentations by South Dakota State University, SUNY Empire State University and Stanford University, and the higher education panel with the College Autism Network. The 2022 figure on college programs for autistic students was presented by SUNY Empire State in its Universal Design session.
