Summer CLSC student Brian Shepard.

After a week of visiting job sites, sitting in on UD undergraduate classes and building life skills, eight high school students with disabilities graduated from CDS’s Summer Career and Life Studies Certificate (Summer CLSC) program on Friday.

Summer CLSC, which is open to high schoolers with any type of disability entering their junior or senior year, is one of the summer programs CDS holds for young adults approaching the transition out of secondary school. Spanning five days, the program is a condensed version of CDS’s Career and Life Studies Certificate (CLSC), a more intensive two-year program for high school graduates with intellectual disabilities.

All eight Summer CLSC participants lived in student housing on campus for the week. They had opportunities to observe UD undergraduate courses from the Departments of Chemistry, Computer and Information Sciences and English. Each also spent time job-shadowing at local businesses including Bancroft Construction, web design group Teakettica, video game developer Luna Wolf Studios, business consultant Predictive Analytics Group and publisher Cat & Mouse Press.

Said Brian Shepard, a Summer CLSC student who joined a Bancroft Construction team at the site of DelDOT’s Newark Train Station project: “I loved to see how they were working – all the machinery and all the tools. It was amazing and I am thinking about going back there for another visit.”