BY THAILIA STALLINGS

MAKING THE ARC

MORE ACCESSIBLE

As a UNM student, do you

know what this unmarked
building is for? I’ll help
you out, this is where the
ARC is located. Even the
sign doesn’t state that the
ARC is located there.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: TABLE OF CONTENTS

2: INTRODUCTION

2-3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

4-7: RESULTS

7: DISCUSSION

8: CONCLUSION

9: REFERENCES

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 INTRODUCTION

The ARC is also known as the Accessibility Resource Center at the University of New
Mexico. To fully understand the question I’m seeking to answer, we must take into
consideration how many students could bene it from the services the ARC provides in the
irst place. The main purpose of the ARC is to provide support and help for students with
disabilities such as mental, physical, cognitive issues, etc. to succeed for higher
education. The center provides accommodations for these students such as, having extra
time on exams, taking exams in a room with the minimum number of distractions as
possible, being allowed to use a cellphone or any other needed electronics during labs,
and more. To fully understand the question I’m seeking to answer, we must take into
consideration how many students could bene it from the services the ARC provides in the
irst place. The statistics for people with disabilities is such a low percentage. On average
in New Mexico around 76% of students who graduate high school goes to university in
2022, but the percentage for disabled students in the United States graduating from high
school going to university is only 32 in 2021-2022. Overall, 23% of students in New Mexico
didn’t graduate high school at all in 2021, and 34% of those students had a disability.

The number of students with a disability attending university is quite low, but the amount
of college graduates with a disability is even lower due to di iculties severe limitations
those students might experience in a college setting, but those di iculties could be more
manageable if universities had better accessibility resources. The University has that, but
the main issue is that students with these di iculties to complete a course can’t ind the
ARC in the irst place. We must ix that issue, so more students with disabilities would be
more encouraged to seek help from the ARC instead of struggling in silence.

RESEARCH METROLOGY

The way I’ll be conducting this research involves a few important steps such as, making a
survey for around 100 random students to complete. The way I’ll be inding these
students are to hand out surveys in my dorm building, these will all be on campus
students considering most freshmen students live on campus. The best way to ind out
how many students even know where the ARC is located, is talking to freshmen because
it will show me if the university has properly told the newcomers what the university can
o er, including the RC to make sure everyone who needs accessibility resources can ind
them right away. The survey will include around 15 questions with ive open response

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questions and 10 closed response questions too narrow it all out in an e ective way to
read threw all the data clearly. Making the survey too broad can show a lot of data
inconsistency’s, which we are attempting to avoid as much as possible.

The second method I’ll be using to conduct this research will be analyzing research that
has already been found in previous years to get a true understanding of how many
people are in need of the services the ARC can provide while comparing that to who
many students actually know where to ind these services if needed. I ind this a very
important step because we can see how many students with disabilities are encouraged
enough to even attend college, and then compare those statistics to how many students
with those disabilities drop out of college or not due to not being able to seek help with
accessibility resources. The only way students can receive the accommodations the ARC
seems to provide is if the students can ind the Accessibility Resource Center in the irst
place. Knowing the statistics of how many people this may a ect can help us understand
the true scale of this issue and help spread awareness to hopefully ix the issue all
together.

The third method I’ll be using to conduct this research will be interviewing the ARC sta ,
along with using Dr. Marissa Greenberg’s research regarding this issue as well. Marissa
Greenberg is a DEI Academic Faculty Leadership Fellow and Associate Professor of
English, in the ields of Disability Studies and Disability Justice and speci ically
on harassment and bullying of people with disabilities in higher education. Her research
was a little di erent than mine considering we are researching two di erent topics, but I
decided to use her statistics she found when interviewing the University of New Mexico’s
faculty and students who had disabilities. This research is important for my research
question because it gives us an insight as of how many people attend UNM have a
disability along with the faculty who also have disabilities. This really narrows our
research down a lot because it’s very di icult to ind statistics only for students at UNM
with a disability considering I’m mainly focusing on the Accessibility Resource Center at
UNM and not at other universities in New Mexico.

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RESULTS

To start these results I’d like to show how much people are disabled in the whole state of
New Mexico compared to the United States. The diagram shown below is telling us that
there are about 15-16.9% of people that have a known disability in New Mexico out of the
other states, which tells us that universities in New Mexico should also be able to be
accessible for all people in the population, which also include the disabled students and
people in the population. The education system should account of everyone, especially if
they are public schools, which the University of New Mexico is.

In New Mexico, there are about 27 public universities, that enroll around 105,851 students
and around 21,953 of those students enrolled at the University of New Mexico, which is
the most in New Mexico when compared to the other 27 public universities in the Staes
shown below will be the top three universities that had the most students enrolled in New
Mexico.

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 This data shows that around 20% of all students in New Mexico are more likely to attend
the University of New Mexico than any other public university in the entire state, which
also means that the University of New Mexico should see that and encourage more
diverse people to attend as well, especially since 15-16.9% of the population is disabled
instead of discouraging these students by making it very di icult to ind the accessibility
resource center that they need especially since they get the appropriate accommodation
for success in college.

A survey Dr. Marissa Greenberg’s conducted will be shown below. These results were
from faculty and students at the University of New Mexico. The irst data set shows what
kind of disability these individuals have. This data shows that all di erent kinds of people
with di erent disabilities attend the University of New Mexico, and being able to have
easy access to the accessibility resource center could provide help and accommodations
for all of these, but if these people can’t ind the location of the accessibility resource
center, how could they reach out for e ective help? They can’t. Simple as that.

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The next data set below is also from Dr. Marissa Greenberg’s survey about disabilities on
the University of New Mexico. The data will show us that the students and faculty Dr.
Marissa Greenberg’s interviewed stated if they ever considered leaving the University of
New Mexico and if they considered leaving their profession due to their experiences at
the University of New Mexico, or due to their experience while studying their preferred
profession at the University of New Mexico.

As you can see from the data set above, 37.2% of these individuals considered leaving the
University of New Mexico frequently plus 30.8% considering leaving the University of New
Mexico sometimes, while 31.6% considered leaving their profession frequently plus 32.9%
considering leaving their profession sometimes as well. These are quite large
percentages since only around 76-78 individuals took the survey. These aren’t good
numbers because over 60% of these individuals considered leaving either the university
all together or their profession at least once while being at the University of New Mexico.

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The data set above will show us the dropout rate or transfer rate of all University of New
Mexico students in recent years.

The data shown above shows us that, even though the University of New Mexico has the
most students enrolled in the entire state, a good fraction of those students, able body or
disabled tend to dropout or transfer to a di erent university.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

The results previously shown an tell us that even though the University of New Mexico has
one of the highest enrollment rates in the entire state, the dropout and transfer rate for
able body and disabled students are signi icant enough that we can’t simply ignore.
Along with the fact that over 60% of disabled individuals who were involved in Dr. Marissa
G’s survey stated agreed that out of 76-78 individuals, over 60% of them have thought
about leaving the university at least once, along with considering leaving their profession
due to their experience at the University of New Mexico.

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CONCLUSION

Since, the University of New Mexico is a public university they should be accessible for
everyone in the state that could be able to attend college such as, disabled people, and
abled body people of course, just everyone. Yes, the university does have an accessibility
resource center for people who need extra accommodations where they could go to seek
help to be able to succeed in higher education, but the university makes it di icult to do
this because it’s so di icult to ind, not just for disabled people either. The sad fact is that
a lot of students at the University of New Mexico have either never heard of the
accessibility resource center, or can’t ind it in person is terrifying. Considering the
dropout and transfer rate is so high, whether the enrollment rate is higher, shows us that
the university is discouraging students instead of encouraging them like they promote on
their website. The website for the accessibility resource center states that "Accessibility
Resource Center (ARC) recognizes individuals with disabilities as an integral part of a
diverse community and is committed to the provision of comprehensive resources to the
University community (faculty, sta , and student) in order to create equitable, inclusive,
and practical learning environments.”, as a mission statement.

The university also has this “one stop” system that is meant to help students and faculty
to locate the accessibility resource center easier, but the “one stop” system is very
discouraging considering the people they employ their either don’t know what the “one
stop” system is for, don’t know how to navigate it to be able to assist others, or don’t even
know what the accessibility resource center is at all. The university’s e orts of being more
encouraging has made them seem more discouraging towards people who are in need of
those services they provide such as housing accommodations, testing accommodation,
classroom assistance, etc. This is the issue that should be addressed the most. Making
the accessibility resource center much easier to access for everyone, whether they are
disabled or not can encourage more students to stay at the university as well as helping
faculty members as well.

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REFERENCES

College Data Analytics Team Unbiased Factual Guarantee. “University of New Mexico - Main
Campus Graduation Rate & Retention Rate.†College Factual, College Factual, 16 Oct. 2023,
www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-new-mexico-main-campus/academic-life/
graduation-and-retention/

CollegeSimply. “Public Colleges in New Mexico.†CollegeSimply, www.collegesimply.com/

colleges/new-mexico/public-colleges/ Accessed 1 Apr. 2024

Crankshaw, Katrina. “The South Had Highest Disability Rate among Regions in 2021.â€
Census.Gov, 27 June 2023, www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/disability-rates-higher-in-
rural-areas-than-urban-areas.html

Disability Justice at UNM: Taking Action in Your Program/Department.†Microsoft Sway,

sway.cloud.microsoft/7NqnvpjXnpxIv6g4?ref=Link Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.

Division for Equity and Inclusion.†Disability Is Diversity :: Division for Equity and Inclusion |
The University of New Mexico, diverse.unm.edu/jeadi-action-plan/disability-is-diversity.html
Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.

Front Cover Pictures- Thailia Stallings. Location- The University of New Mexico.