Greenwood School. The first thought that comes to my mind when I hear these words are: What is that place, really? As a TSU senior, you would think I would know the building's purpose by now, but I didn’t find out until last week.
According to Jason Hunsiker’s article in the Kirksville Daily Express, "Truman seeks to bring Greenwood School back to life with autism clinic," Greenwood was once home to Kirksville’s primary school. Truman State bought the building from the Kirksville school district in December 1998. For a while, the TSU wrestling team used the school’s gym as a practice facility. Currently, Greenwood is a storage unit for all things massive. Extra dorm room beds, computers, and theater props are just a few things that can be found inside.
Greenwood has held the subtitle of “storage unit” for the last 17 years. Truman State University’s President, Troy Paino—lovingly referred to by students as T. Pain—hopes to change this title to “Inter-Professional Autism Clinic” in upcoming years.
Hunsiker's article states that Paino will go to Jefferson City to request roughly $20 million. The money will be used to renovate Greenwood School, add additional classrooms to Pershing Building, and make a science lab space at A.T. Still University's dental clinic in Saint Louis. If the request is approved, Truman will work alongside A.T. Still and develop a fast-track program for students interested in pursuing careers in Occupational Therapy and mental health therapy. It will also broaden the curriculum of existing health programs at the school.
There’s a growing need for autism clinics throughout the United States and the world. According to Nicole Ostrow’s article, “Autism Costs More Than $2 Million Over Patient’s Life,” more than 3.5 million Americans live with an autism spectrum disorder. The number continues to grow. 1 in 68 children were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in the 2010 census (2014 CDC). That's an increase of 119.4 percent since the census taken in 2000 (2014 CDC). Autism clinics are easier to find in major cities, but with Kirksville in a very rural region of Missouri, access to the therapy services needed by adults and children with autism means driving miles away from home.
Based off of Hunsiker's article, Paino has major support from the Northwest region and a few local representatives. However, Hunsiker did not cover the overall interest of students at TSU. On December 7, the day of the article's publication, at least 10 of my Facebook friends shared the article on their feeds. As I've learned through working for Odyssey, it can take a lot for someone to actually push your article's share button. I started to wonder what past and present students from Truman might have to say about the autism clinic's potential. So, in the final days of the semester, I sat down with three current students and one Truman State alumni to find out their thoughts about the prospect of bringing an autism clinic to Truman's campus.
Name: Patty Brockman; current TSU Student
Major: Music and Economics
Year: Senior
Age: 21
Affiliations: Sigma Alpha Iota, National Association of Music Association Collegiate, Ensembles and Campus Ambassador
Q: Why do you think Truman is the best school for a possible Autism Clinic?
A: I think it's a good choice with the combination of A.T. Still and the high standards of Truman's academics.
Q: Why are you personally so interested in this potential addition to Truman's campus?
A: Well, one, I've really wanted them to do something with Greenwood School. As a tour guide, I think that any of the hands-on experiences we have attracts high-achieving students to Truman and keeps our standard of excellence.
I also think it's cool to have an autism clinic because I'm from a rural area. We have lots of family friends, and my own sister, that have autism of various degrees. At my church back at home, we have a lady that has adopted four special needs people that were older, most people wouldn't get adopted at that point in time. She's started a ministry for people with special needs so I've helped with that. I've specifically been an aid to Ben, who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, but we have lots of families that have special needs that come, so we have all range of autistic kids. Specifically one girl that's not verbal because she has it so bad; she's my little sister's age. She came to my wedding. It's cool to see that there's more opportunities because I know that they all go to Camp Barnabas which is a camp grounds for kids with special needs and their siblings. So it's cool to see something that would be full-year.
Q: As a current student here at Truman, how do you think the addition of the Autism Clinic will affect future generations of Bulldogs?
A: I like hands-on experiences while in college. I think it's important. I know it's one of the university's goals. They are trying to make it where everyone has what they call a high impact semester, either a semester abroad or a semester-long internship, before they leave. They kind of want to make it a graduation requirement. This could be great for that.
I've had friends that have gone into music therapy from Truman. I had a friend specifically go into Music Therapy to work with autistic students and this could have been super cool if they had it when she was here. She tried different things like music therapy programs, but I'm just kind of excited that there's going to be expanded opportunities for students and the special education program.
Q: How do you think this will impact the lives of students in every major outside of the ones that are affiliated with OT and health care counseling?
A: I'm just thinking about all the different types of therapies that I know exist. Like there's art therapy and music therapy and animal therapy and all this stuff, so I'm sure that there's tons of people that could take advantage of it from other areas, but also just awareness. We have autism awareness months nationally, but just having it that close to you if you're someone that has never had any experience with it, this could raise general awareness on campus.
Name: Jack Milford; current TSU Student
Major: Psychology
Year: Senior
Age: 22
Affiliations: Pi Kappa Phi and Best Buddies
Q: Why do you think Truman is the best school for a possible Autism Clinic?
A: I'm very much inclined to service leadership, I think that that's a great way to grow your community, to learn about yourself, what you value, and what you want in life. So, as far as all of Truman's other values I think servant leadership goes along with all of those. It's about building the person up and so I think it would be stupid to not have this because that's everything Truman is about. It's about changing the environment around you and not doing it because of a pay check or because it looks good on a resume, but because you want to do it and you believe in the message. So this just sounds perfect for that.
Q: Why are you personally so interested in this potential addition to Truman's campus?
A: I'm planning on going into nonprofit work. I want to be in the special needs community and doing what I can. I recently founded Best Buddies at Truman and that's been my project this semester. As well in Pi Kappa Phi, I'm the philanthropy chair and our philanthropy is the Ability Experience which is entirely about helping those with disabilities and ending the stereotype of what disability is, so that's a subject I'm really passionate about. In the last two years, I've been getting more involved with these sorts of things. I have an internship with the Ability Experience next semester.When I heard that this was a possibility I thought it was a really cool idea because I know other people were looking to buy Greenwood and use it for different things like building housing but I think this is a much better use of the resources.
Q: Why do you feel the addition of an Autism Clinic to Truman's campus is necessary for the Kirksville community?
A: I think as far as my knowledge goes, Kirksville, or at least the surrounding areas, are somewhat under-served just because of how rural it is. So if you go to like Saint Louis you'd see a lot more centers and clinics that cater towards people with autism or other disabilities. I know there are places here in town that serve people such as Chariton Valley or Life Ability Center, but I think having something on as big of a scale as what they're looking to do with Greenwood would just be really helpful for Kirksville and the surrounding counties. They can come here and use it as a hub and a central area for resources that they need and wouldn't be able to get without it.
I think it'd be really cool to have something really close to campus that is directly related to Truman so that Best Buddies could partner with them. We could get more people involved with Best Buddies and get more people interacting with people in the special needs community. I think that would help further our goal of integration and ending stereotypes of being disabled.
We just founded Best Buddies this semester; we're not even chartered yet. We have about 20 members. Best Buddies is an international organization. It's kind of like a big brother/big sister program in which we are partnered with the Life Abilities Center in Kirksville. We work with Kim Baker there, who is one of their event coordinators. Kim and Lisa Goran, who is in the special education department, are our advisers.
Kim sets us up with the people that are served at Life Abilities and we worked with her to match people one-on-one. It's typically people between the ages of 18 and 25, kind of a peer-to-peer relationship. So right now I think we've got 11 matches out of the 20 members. The responsibilities of a matched pair are to meet up with your buddy at least once a month and then you have to stay in communication with them at least once a week. It's been surprising since I was expecting only 5 or 6 people to sign up and then kind of have a starting up semester, but there was a lot of interest right way. I think it has potential to really skyrocket in numbers and matches and become something really big on campus. Something like Greenwood would just be huge for us and for the community in general.
Q: How do you think this will impact the lives of students in every major outside of the ones that are affiliated with OT and health care counseling?
A: It's my hope that the clinic would bring more people into those majors. It'd be really cool to see more guys go out for things like OT or Communication Disorders majors. I took a class in Communication Disorders last semester and I was one of 2 guys out of a class of 25 or 30 people. The same for my special education class right now, I'm one of five guys. I know that Truman's about 60/40 girls to guys, but it still seems like a lot of the majors here as far as that area goes is very under represented by males. It would be really awesome to see some sort of a change and push into getting more guys into the program.
Name: Savannah Peters; current TSU Student
Major: Health Science, pre-Occupational Therapy
Year: Junior
Age: 21
Affiliations: Tau Lambda Sigma
Q: Why do you think Truman is the best school for a possible Autism Clinic?
A: I think we're a really open-minded campus. I know we have pre-OT which isn't emphasized as much, but I think people would be ecstatic about this option. I know I am, even though I might not be here when it happens.
Q: Why are you personally so interested in this potential addition to Truman's campus?
A: I am super excited to do OT, but when I started I didn't know you had to do undergrad and then get your masters to even do anything. If this fast-track course that they are thinking about would have been here, that would have been even more of a pull for me to come to Truman. I really want to work with children when I do OT and I think that is kind of what this is about as far as I know, so I would have been very excited to be a part of it. Another thing is that I really hate doing research, but if I could do research specifically in the things I'm super interested in which is what they're going to be doing with this, I would love it. I wouldn't even mind the statistics and all of that.
Q: As a current student here at Truman, how do you think the addition of the Autism Clinic will affect future generations of Bulldogs?
A: It will definitely draw more attention to the OT program here because most people look for a place that they can stay for their undergrad and masters and here you can't do that, but now that this is an option I think that'll draw more attention here. You know going into college you are going to have to do some research, but if you know there's a clinic here geared towards what you want to do that you'll be able to do research specifically in that area I think that'll be a big draw.
Q: Why do you feel the addition of an Autism Clinic to Truman's campus is necessary for the Kirksville community?
A: A lot of people, I think, when they think about Kirksville they think it's pretty closed minded, which I don't think is very true. The Northeast region really doesn't have anything like this, so we could have many families here with autism that have to drive miles to get help and now they could be right in their own community and get the one-on-one help that they need. We have to drive an hour to Columbia to get what we want and it's not even medical wise, so to have something closer to you would probably help a lot of families.
I just hope that they don't focus solely on the medical model of disability, I hope they also focus on the social which is changing our community to where having a disability isn't disabling. I hope the goal and mission of this place is going to be to not only help these people, I hope they talk to the patients one-on-one to find out exactly what it is that they want to achieve and things like that, but I hope they also take into account that our community could use a lot of help. I just hope that this place also pushes for community reform in that aspect and more understanding and appreciation for people who have disabilities. They're literally no different than you and I, they were just born with something we didn't have.
Name: Clare Temperelli; TSU Alum
Degree: BA Psychology and MAE Special Education
Year of Graduation: 2013
Age: 24
Career: Special Education Teacher
Q: Why are you personally so interested in this potential addition to Truman's campus?
A: I have a sister with autism and work with autistic children as a special education teacher. I also used to be an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapist at an autism center in Kansas City, MO. ABA is one of the most successful strategies of working with people with autism. It uses lots of data and measurement, and breaks down behavior into small parts and discreet trials in order to shape it into what you want the person to do. At ABA centers, the therapists would be overseen by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). That would be the person doing the data tracking and designing the trials and therapy programs for each "student". So an example of some therapies would be shoe tying: you'd break the whole process down into each step, and practice each step over and over until it was mastered (as shown by the data), and then add the next step until you can do the whole task. Some other things we worked on were things like memorizing personal info like addresses and phone numbers, vocabulary that you would need in the world (places, food, etc), and a lot of conversation and social skill work. One of the best things I think we did was help autistic kids have a "script" for everyday conversations that they could use. We would have them go step by step and eventually they would have it mastered, so if they were out in the real world, they would know what the steps of a conversation could be. Which is something that you or I would just naturally know, but people with autism have to be taught.
Q: As an alum of Truman, how do you think the addition of the Autism Clinic will affect future generations of Bulldogs?
A: Future students will have more opportunities to learn about working with individuals with autism. It will give them the chance to get meaningful experiences before graduation. I wish it had been there while I was at Truman.
Q: How do you think this will impact the lives of students in every major outside of the ones that are affiliated with OT and health care counseling?
A: Outside of OT and health care counseling, it will be a great opportunity for those looking into education, especially special education. I'm hoping the education department and special education plan to partner with it too if it comes to campus.
While these students will be alumni of Truman State by the time the legislation is passed and the Greenwood House is fully renovated, their excitement at the prospects of this new addition to campus shows that Truman has passionate students willing to take on the responsibilities necessary to make this clinic great. While nothing is set in stone, I believe that T. Pain's goal for our school shows he is a true representative of the Truman community. He knows what Truman students are capable of achieving and understands that we can take on this kind of program. Now, all we have to do is wait and see if the legislation in Jefferson City believes in our abilities as well.
If you want to learn more about autism and its growing prevalence in the United States, here are a few links:
