"[Our intern] made great relationships with visitors and resources around [our city]. Her office and computer knowledge helped when we have been short-handed. And most importantly, she has taught everyone in our office, including myself and the board members, the importance of incorporating disabilities in our international exchanges." 

"It has been my pleasure to work with [our intern]. She produced significant information and assessed various advertising options to help us choose the most appropriate opportunities that would fit within our budget. I look forward to seeing the true results of her efforts as we move into our recruitment period in September.  Another specific research project assigned to her included our end-of-cycle program analysis form our returnee surveys.  This important project was completed with more than anticipated attention to detail and unexpected, but incredibly helpful, charts for the various results.  [She] conducted a session with our Admissions & Registration department on working with individuals with disabilities. She has helped raise awareness within the department and within the organization about these issues.  She has left a wonderful resource guide to aid us in working with potential applicants with disabilities, so that we can better assess individual needs and our ability to accommodate individuals within our exchange program opportunities. Interspersed amongst these special projects were various administrative tasks and data-entry projects which she never hesitated to perform.  She has provided general feedback on many aspects of the department that she noticed while working here, and we have appreciated her efforts to help us improve our performance."

"[Our intern] served as a program assistant [on a professional exchange program to the United States]. Program assistants are expected to work flexible hours and many weekends. [She] completed her six-week internship with our office at the end of July, working well over the required 300 hours. They function as camp counselors, tour guides and coordinators for all aspects of the program (food, transportation, entertainment).  We could always on [her] to be punctual, and if given a task, it would get done. We had her live in the dormitories with our participants, and she was often called upon to do extra duties: help correct grammar on presentations, fix computers when they weren’t working, answer any random questions that could come up, sometimes after 10 pm. Never complaining, these requests would be fulfilled. Many times our program assistants would need to do several things within a time frame, and multi-tasking skills were needed, as well as patience and humor.  I found [her] to have a great sense of humor and a pleasure to work with. We had [her] prepare and give a presentation on disabilities...to our participants and also to our international programs office. Both presentations were very informative and well received....For the presentation in our office, I also had [our intern] prepare some reference materials on disabilities that could be used as a guide and provides information for our study abroad coordinators to think about when working with and placing students with disabilities. We put this reference material in our resource center, where it is available to our office staff and students." 

"[Our intern] worked with staff to consider access issues, which resulted in obtaining a wheelchair ramp and an accessible bathroom in our office building on campus. Additionally, the staff has been forced to think longer and deeper about how we might reach out to other students with disabilities....I and other staff members learned that we could not diminish our expectations based solely on the fact that [our intern] has a disability. Impressed with his enthusiasm and hard work and appreciative of his disability perspective, our international office hired him to continue outreach to diverse student populations. His sense of humor brought a certain levity to the office."

For information on accommodating people with disabilities in the workplace see these resources:

Job Accommodations Network

Workplace Support and Job Retention

Human Resources Toolkit