Oct. 16, 2023 – For the last 21 years, students with disabilities accommodations in place were communicated to faculty through email. Navigating through volumes of email messages is a time-consuming process that also relies on a perfect open rate to be sure no message is missed. As faculty prepare for each semester, they are forced to find time to weed through these emails and ensure they don’t miss the crucial notification(s) that help inform the format of their course(s).
Enter Tiina Itkonen. The Professor of Education and Political Science has always had a passion for helping others, particularly those who can’t always advocate for themselves. She has worked hard to establish disability accommodation standards and best practices at CSUCI, and often enlists the help of others when a solution requires collaboration between divisions.
Her recent work toward creating a centralized portal for faculty to access their class lists so they can quickly identify students with disabilities accommodations, is a perfect example of her efforts, and it officially launched this fall. After a successful pilot program earlier this year, the Fall semester marks the first time that all faculty have access, via myCI, to access class lists that contain this important information.
This work would not have been possible without the support and knowledge of Jerry Garcia in Information Technology Services (ITS), DASS analyst Stacey Ayer, and many more folks in Business & Financial Affairs and Student Affairs. This incredible team was able to identify the right tool for this need, implement a version that would support our campus, and train colleagues on how to use the system. This work is a crucial step in supporting students and faculty at CSUCI so we can ensure that all students what they need to be successful.
For more information contact Tiina Itkonen at tiina.itkonen@csuci.edu.