A Home Away From Home for Students With Disabilities

The Paul Menton Centre (PMC) for Students With Disabilities at Carleton tries to create a home away from home for approximately 150 graduate students and 1450 undergrad students with disabilities.

The Centre was once described by University Affairs magazine as “the gold standard” for this kind of centre in Canada.

Here is a short list of all of the services that the PMC offers students:

• Co-ordination of academic accommodations in the classroom
• Access to several adaptive workstations and specialized software
• Pre-screening for suspected Learning Disability (LD) and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Learning strategy support and peer tutoring
• Disability counselling
• Mentor Volunteer Program (MVP)
• Attendant Services Program
• Carleton Aspirations Club (for students with Asperger’s Syndrome)

The PMC works in conjunction with other services on campus such as the Library to ensure that the needs of students with disabilities are met. You can view a list of those services here.

Together with the Educational Development Centre, the PMC offers training to grad students and others on accessible learning. The next workshop is scheduled for the morning of Nov. 26. You can register by going to this page. This session is part of our series on teaching skills through Grad Navigate.

Carleton was the first University to offer 24-hour, seven-day-a-week attendant services and responds to over 1,600 service requests a month. The program expanded to Ottawa’s Algonquin College in 2001, and Algonquin remains the only college to offer 24-hour attendant services.

Larry McCloskey, who manages the PMC, was described by one of his employees as being a “visionary leader”. He notes that the attendant service program remains the only attendant program in the world that is 24 hours, 7 days a week, all year long, embedded in a university and college residence.

Building on Carleton University’s well established reputation as a leader in providing access to students with disabilities, the READ Initiative brings the expertise in all of Carleton’s academic disciplines and service departments into collaboration with individuals and organizations worldwide that are committed to accessibility for persons with disabilities.

More information is available on the Paul Menton Centre website or by emailing pmc@carleton.ca. TTY is available at 613-520-3937.