This was my first SOTA, short for State of the Art Conference on Inclusive Postsecondary Education and Individuals with Intellectual Disability. From the moment I arrived I knew this was a very different conference. The word “inclusion” is not something used as a marketing catch phrase, but something both organizers and participants live by. The following are my takeaways from 3 days of excellent talks, presentations, and very meaningful conversations with both program leaders and alumni.
Every inclusive postsecondary program eventually gets asked the same thing by funders, families and state agencies: did it work? My takeaway from the State of the Art (SOTA) conference is that the programs with a good answer worked on three things from the first day. They put students in regular classes, then into paid jobs, and finally set up a way to find out what happens after graduation.
1. Regular classes come one professor at a time
Start by asking each instructor what they need. Academic inclusion has been growing, and the national data Caitlyn Bukaty and Meg Grigal of Think College presented shows how far it has come.
2024-25, federally funded programs
About 63%
of course enrollments were regular college courses, the highest since the program began.
Same year
97% of students
took at least one regular college course.
One presenter described programs that stayed fully separate for 15 years and then turned around "one class at a time, one professor at a time."
The faculty session was the most practical of the lot. It was a new learning series on supporting faculty and instructors, led by Danielle Dahm and Chelsea Stinnett of the University of Massachusetts Boston, Brianna Shults of Syracuse University, Kaitlyn Martin and Mollie Sheppard of Saint Joseph's University, and Mindy Lingo of Think College. Nobody asks an instructor to redesign a course. Instead, they ask what experience the instructor has with disability, what support they'd like, and how much contact they expect.
How the learning contract works
The student's contract keeps the syllabus goals exactly as written and adds how the student will show what they've learned. For example, in English 101, one program swaps in plain-language chapter summaries of Hamlet so a student can follow along.
Faculty most often say the contract isn't rigorous enough, and in that case the program adjusts it. Sometimes, however, the adjustment goes the other way.
Two habits worth copying
First, one director asks to be added as a teaching assistant in the instructor's Canvas course, so she can see rubrics and due dates without a pile of emails.
Second, another keeps every contract she has ever written and asks the professor whether the syllabus has changed. Usually it hasn't.
2. Paid work, early, ideally before college
Paid work now predicts paid work later. The same Think College team wants unpaid internships kept short and on purpose, because it doesn't take a year to find out what doesn't work.
Enrolled students, 2024-25
39%
246 of 629 students held a paid job while enrolled.
Graduates, 2022-23
47%
had paid work at graduation or within 90 days, which leaves plenty of room.
Clare Papay and Belkis Choiseul-Praslin of Think College at the University of Massachusetts Boston presented the new From College to Career study, which looked at 480 graduates. At graduation, any pathway with a paid job stood out, while a paid internship alone did not. A year later, however, most of that advantage was gone.
What lasted
Paid work before enrollment. Those students were about 2.3 times as likely to be employed a year out.
Only 175 students had follow-up data, so treat it as a hint.
Ask about work history at intake. In addition, I'd argue a paid job is daily practice in executive function skills, such as planning the week, getting there on time and following through.
3. The follow-up system has to exist on day one
Funders care most about what happens after graduation, yet it is the hardest thing to collect.
First-year retention
82% vs 77%
in these programs, compared with first-time undergraduates nationally.
One to four years out
65% to 78% employed
among graduates who answered surveys. A little over half responded.
The employment numbers are harder to read than retention. The presenters said so plainly: the graduates who answer may not look like the ones who don't. Therefore, "students do well while they're here" won't carry a budget request.
What the presenters recommended
Get contact details and permission at enrollment, and talk to families about staying in touch.
Next, let program staff make the calls, since students don't pick up for strangers.
Finally, collect only what you'll act on, because someone has to be paid to gather it and someone has to change services because of it.
The paperwork side of this showed up in Florida, too. Sheryl Sandvoss and Claudia Bello Punto of the Florida Center for Students with Unique Abilities described it in their session on a decade of Florida's postsecondary programs. Their annual report had a credentials appendix of more than 50 pages. As a result, the center built a searchable online dashboard that families and programs can filter by career field, because parents kept asking who offers culinary.
Four things to do tomorrow
The accreditation session was led by Martha Mock and Mary Judge-Diegert of the Inclusive Higher Education Accreditation Council, with Jaclyn Camden of Virginia Commonwealth University, whose ACE-IT in College program earned accreditation, and Ariana Amaya of Vanderbilt's Next Steps. Their list: pick one gap in your evidence, make one shared folder, give it an owner, and put a quarterly review on the calendar.
The short version
The programs with a good answer to "did it work?" bring in instructors one at a time, get students into paid work early, and build the follow-up system on day one.
Thank you to the Taishoff Center at Syracuse University for hosting, and to the presenters named above for sharing their work.
Sources: sessions at the State of the Art (SOTA) Conference 2026, Sacramento, October 2026, hosted by Syracuse University's Taishoff Center, including the Paid Work Matters session slides, the Updated 2026 Accreditation Presentation, and the session recordings. Retention, course, credentials dashboard and one-to-four-year employment figures come from the session recordings and the national coordinating center's annual report.
