Group offers skills, and friendship, to local students with disabilities
Read the full story by Caitlyn Hayes in the Cornell Chronicle.
The TST-BOCES Career Skills Club, a student-run group supported by the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement, works with TST-BOCES students with intellectual disabilities, such as Down syndrome or autism, to develop communication and life skills, and a sense of curiosity and confidence, that help them as they transition out of school.
The program is part of a larger relationship between the TST-BOCES work readiness program and Cornell. The BOCES students spend Friday mornings with students and staff from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and three mornings a week working various jobs at the Statler Hotel. For their time, the BOCES students, all aged 16 to 22, receive credit toward their Career Development and Occupational Studies credential, which recognizes a student’s ability to enter the workforce.
The Cornell students said the group is a source of growth for all involved.
“It’s very reciprocal,” said Isabelle Erskine ’25, president of the club and a human development major in the College of Human Ecology. “We’re learning as much from them as we’re giving to them.”
“We become friends with the students as much as they become friends with us,” said Kathryn Erich ’26, the club’s public relations chair and a student in the ILR School. “This community helps me realize what’s actually important. It also makes me feel like I’m having an impact beyond Cornell’s campus.”
