With an enrollment that reaches 50,000, it is easy for students with disabilities to get lost in the crowd. However, the McBurney Disability Resource Center strives to accommodate individual students so their disabilities are not a focal point of their college experience.
Students with learning disabilities, mobility impairments and sensory impairments, are provided with accommodations for their academic studies.
'I graduated last year and in lecture I used to always hear the announcement for McBurney and be so confused as to what it is,' said Alicia Blegen, McBurney Interim Student Services Coordinator.
Interim Director B.A. Scheuers said the McBurney Center intends to not be overtly visible on campus, providing itself as helpful, not overbearing, to its student users.
After organizing proper assistance for students, the McBurney Center becomes a less direct source of contact for students, being a resource only when necessary.
'My communication with McBurney staff is actually very infrequent,' said UW-Madison senior Mike Hinrichs, who is completely blind. 'I am self-sufficient, a practiced self-advocate, and work hard to develop early working contacts with my professors to assist in establishing accommodations for myself.'
The McBurney Center's report of Data on Services for the 2004 to 2005 fiscal year showed 745 UW-Madison students receive help from its services. Notetaking is among the most utilized services, with 112 student users.
A student becomes a client of the McBurney Center by obtaining Verified Individualized Services Accommodation form.
'The VISA is a record of the common accommodations we're recommending for them, so a faculty member can ask for a student's VISA just to show that the student went to McBurney and this is what they recommended,' Scheuers said.
A VISA is acquired with proper documentation of the student's disability and a meeting with the McBurney Center's Student Services Coordinator to create appropriate help. Through the McBurney Center, students are also assisted by notetakers who are UW-Madison students, enrolled in the same class they are notetaking for. Notetakers are paid a $30-per-credit stipend.
'I mostly have in-class relationships, where the person I take notes for and I are friendly to one another in class, but do not have any relationship outside of class,' said UW-Madison junior and three-semester notetaker, Rachel Miller. 'One girl and I would frequently run into one another on campus, and we would chit-chat and make friendly conversation, but that was more or less the extent of it.'
But Hinrichs said notetaking services are essential to his education.
'Sometimes [in lecture] I miss a comment, or the spelling of a technical term, or a quote that the professor is reading from a Power Point slide, and my notetaker saves me,' he said.
