Beth Myers is the Executive Director of the Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education. She is also a Research Assistant Professor in the Teaching and Leadership Department of the School of Education at Syracuse University, teaching in the Inclusive Elementary and Special Education Program and leading graduate students in a Special Education Consultant internship program. Beth holds degrees in elementary education, special education, and literacy from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Myers taught in the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania and helped to create a best-practice inclusive autism support program there. She opened a regional center for autism services in 2006 and served as Executive Director before joining the center’s consultation team in 2011. Professor Myers has created dozens of programs with individuals and families, including the Advancement Square group for adults with autism, The Teen Project for adolescents with ASD, the Awesome Summer Days program for school-age children, and the SAIL Supported Adult Independent Living program. Beth holds a dual appointment with the Kelberman Center for Autism Services as Director of Special Projects. She has provided school consultations for students with autism and staff development to over 50 school districts. Additionally, Professor Myers is the faculty liaison to the Syracuse City School District for the SUITR Program, a Masters Residency program in urban special education. Myers has conducted research to study the autobiographical works of adolescents with autism, which won the 2012 Ralph C. Preston Award for Scholarship and Teaching Contributing to Social Justice and Educational Equity.​



Jonathan Rushmore is a 27-year-old adult with a learning disability. He is currently enrolled in InclusiveU at Syracuse University, where he has taken a wide variety of classes ranging from technology to anthropology to education. His hope is to graduate with a certificate from Syracuse University at the end of the 2017-2018 school year. After school his dream is to work with adults and children with disabilities and, down the road, to start a non-profit organization to help people with disabilities get the supports and services they need. InclusiveU has allowed Jonathan to re-enter the educational system with hopes of a career working with others with disabilities.



Donald Taylor is the Training Manager at the Youth Employment Solutions Center and the producer of YES To Employment.

Announcer: You’re listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast series that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.



Today we’re talking with Beth Myers, the Executive Director of the Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education and a Professor in the Teaching and Leadership Department of the School of Education at Syracuse University, and Jonathan Rushmore, an education major with the InclusiveU program at Syracuse University. The program is not just about inclusion at the University level: so we talk about their employment initiatives, their mentorship program and their business outreach efforts.



Complete transcript forthcoming



Announcer: You’ve been listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.



Today we spoke with Beth Myers and Jonathan Rushmore about the university participation program and its employment initiatives at Syracuse University. For more about the Taishoff Center and InclusiveU visit taishoffcenter.syr.edu/inclusiveu.



For more about YES! To Employment, including show notes, links to the resources discussed, a complete transcript and a schedule of episodes, visit www.yestoemployment.org/podcast. You can subscribe through iTunes or your favorite Android podcast app to have the series delivered automatically to your device so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a rating on iTunes. Ratings will help us get the series in front of more listeners.



YES! To Employment is a production of the Youth Employment Solutions Center, the national Training and Technical Assistance Center that serves as a hub of information and expertise for the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) state projects. The YES! Center is a collaboration of TASH and TransCen. You can learn more about TASH at tash.org and more about TranCen at transcen.org. You can receive updates from the YES! Center on this podcast and our other activities by following us on Facebook or on twitter at @YEStoEmployment.



Partnerships in Employment is a series of seed grants funded by the Administration for Community Living’s Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, made to states for the purpose of transforming state disability support systems to competitive, integrated employment. AIDD is dedicated to ensuring that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families are able to fully participate in, and contribute to all aspects of community life in the United States and its territories.



Music for YES! To Employment is an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Director and Autistic Self Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. You can learn more about the Musical Autist at www.themusicalautist.org.



Be sure to keep YES! To Employment on your list: we’ll have another episode on competitive integrated employment for you in the near future.



Musical postlude



This interview was originally recorded 22 September 2016.



The audio of this interview and the transcript have been lightly edited for clarity.







This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute or adapt it for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, provided you adhere to the terms, including that you attribute the original source.



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