Courtesy of Dr. Jillian Heilman
Student Accessibility Services’ (SAS) first annual Helix Pre-Orientation program from Aug. 19 to Aug. 21 brought 20 upperclassmen mentors and 28 first-year mentees together in order to provide a new welcome experience for students with disabilities at Conn. The typical Welcome Weekend is often overwhelming and lacks helpful details on how to access some critical resources for students with disabilities on campus. Students with disabilities have also struggled historically to find others to connect with socially during Welcome Weekend. Thanks to the impressive combined effort of SAS Director Dr. Jill Heilman, SAS Coordinator Lillian Liebenthal, and the many students invested in disability justice and equity on campus, Helix was a success in providing community, support resources, and a better orientation experience for students with disabilities.
As defined in the Helix Leader Manual, “The Helix Peer to Peer Mentor program is a voluntary program that allows upperclassmen to serve as peer mentors to incoming freshmen registered with the Student Accessibility Services office. Helix mentors will first meet these students during the pre-orientation program and then follow them throughout their first year at Conn.”
The idea for a pre-orientation program for students with disabilities has been proposed several times throughout the years, but it was the vision of Max Eikinas ‘26, Owyn Ledina ‘25, Minnie Madden ‘25, and Anna Vredevoogd ‘26 during a career and disability event that really began to pick up steam. Once Heilman came on campus in the fall of 2023 with her tenacious need to improve the experience of students with disabilities on campus and tireless support of disability initiatives, it was only a matter of time before Helix would be born—in fact, it would take less than a year. Throughout the spring of 2024, a committee made up of Vredevoogd, Eikinas, Andrew Rood ‘27, Amanda Scherer ‘27, Heilman, and Liebenthal got to work designing the program as well as recruiting and training mentors.
In an effort to “provide students and their families the resources, connections, and tools they’ll need to embark on this new chapter in their academic journey,” as set in the Helix Leader Manual, mentees were provided opportunities to bond in lowkey social settings, participate in accessible tours of campus, explore the Arboretum and various campus quiet spaces, learn about SAS and affiliated resources, practice having accommodations meetings with faculty, know what to expect in order to prepare for Welcome Weekend, and more.
Next year, Heilman hopes to build on this year’s success by bringing mentors to campus earlier to create a stronger bond among them before beginning their mentorship activities. She also looks forward to incorporating Helix into Welcome Weekend for more continuity for mentees.
Helix set out just what it meant to do and laid the groundwork for even more progress toward making Conn’s campus a welcoming place for students with disabilities. At the conclusion of Helix’s pre-orientation, one mentee told Heilman, “I found my people; there are six of us and we have movie nights in each other’s dorms and we go to the dining hall together, and I just feel so happy and welcomed.”
In achieving its goal of creating an experience that would stop the cycle of lonely, alienated, and confused first-year students with disabilities, Helix has made major steps in improving Conn.
