Project CATALIST is a three-year collaborative effort of the Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services (DRS), the Virginia Community College System, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). The purpose of the project is to develop and implement intensive training for college faculty in the areas of accommodations and instructional technology for students with disabilities and to support college faculty in applying and adapting this generic training to their specific disciplines and classroom settings.

Specific project outcomes and activities are designed to be replicable at state, regional, and/or institutional levels. In contrast to typical faculty development activities on local campuses that tend to target large interdisciplinary groups of faculty and provide general instructional strategies, Project CATALIST will reach faculty from many two and four year colleges across the state through existing peer groups consisting predominantly of community college faculty, but including four-year college faculty representation and clustered by discipline.

Intensive training will be developed to teach faculty the reasoning process required in determining the essential requirements of a course or program and subsequent reasonable accommodations to be considered on a case-by-case basis with students with disabilities. Training will target a total of eight to ten peer groups in years one and two of the project and will provide a forum for discussion, networking between two and four year college faculty, and application of information specific to academic disciplines.

In keeping with broader VCCS, SCHLEV, and state goals and priorities for the colleges, a second training initiative of Project CATALISt will pertain to the use of technology and emerging learning environments. A summer institute in years one and two of the project will be held for peer group participants and other interested college faculty pertaining to the use of instructional technology for students with disabilities. This hands-on, experiential training will allow faculty to be exposed to a range of emerging and standard technologies, possibly involve a pairing of experienced and novice technology users, and incorporate visits to local business and industry sites that are making exemplary use of technology in the workplace.

This link to the employment sector is crucial to the evolving process of defining essential requirements in a college program of study, as seen particularly in vocationally oriented training programs such as Allied Health. In addition to the two replicable training initiatives, the third major thrust of Project CATALIST is to offer incentive grants to faculty to apply and expand their training within their specific disciplines and courses.

Through a competitive RFP process, all two and four-year college faculty who attended both the peer group trainings and the summer institute will be eligible to submit proposals. Approximately five annual awards of roughly $15,000 each will be provided at the end of years one and two of the project. Priorities of the RFP will target the development of innovative instructional strategies and/or classroom environments to promote improved participation and performance for students with disabilities.

Within this absolute priority, preference will be given to projects that develop models for serving students with disabilities who are also members of minority groups; projects that provide collaborative linkages with the employment sector (such as internships); and projects that involve collaboration between two and four-year college faculty. Distribution of awards across disciplines will be considered in the review process.

The cycle of accommodation training through peer groups, technology training through the summer institute, and faculty incentive grants will be offered for two successive years. One product of this project will be a comprehensive Project CATALIST training manual consisting of accommodation training, technology training, and multiple chapters delineating the application of training within various disciplines. This manual will contain replicable training procedures and concrete examples of disciplinary applications for use at a state or regional level, by service providers at individual institutions in providing training to faculty; or by professional associations and academic disciplinary groups wishing to use these findings as a springboard for discussion and delineation of essential requirements, reasonable accommodations, and instructional strategies within a specific discipline at a national level.