“I want to go to college at Cal Poly so that I can work with you,” Luna Larsen’s 6-year-old son, Nate, said to her one day.
Larsen, the Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies (LAES) program coordinator at Cal Poly and current grad student at San Jose State University, was filled with joy at the idea of her little boy attending Cal Poly alongside her.
At the same time, though, she knew that dream wasn’t likely. Her son has autism and, according to Larsen, large institutions like Cal Poly aren’t ready for students who have specific support needs.
As a person with autism herself, Larsen understood the struggle of navigating higher education with a disability. She recalled feeling like an imposter while pursuing her undergrad degree at the University of Southern California.
“I was afraid to ask questions because I thought, ‘Oh, if they know I’m struggling, they’re going to kick me out because they’re going to be like, ‘you don’t belong here,’” Larsen said.
Larsen said her undergrad experience inspired her to work in higher education and help college students with autism specifically.
“I wanted to give them the support and care that I hadn’t received,” Larsen said.
So, in 2022, Larsen created the Empowering Autistic Scholars Mentoring & Research Training Program at Cal Poly, better known as the EAS program, to provide support and community for students with autism.
According to Larsen, autism is “a neurodevelopmental difference that affects how people think, move, interact, sense and process information.”
Eva Voss, a biochemistry sophomore and student mentor in the EAS program, said that autism is “different for everyone.”
“In reality, it’s a very wide spectrum,” Voss said.
Voss added that autism is often misunderstood and stigmatized, especially in academic settings.
“We’re just like you,” Voss said, “Just because we’re born differently with our brains altered doesn’t mean we’re different people.”
Larsen said she designed the EAS program to complement accommodations for students already offered by Cal Poly’s Disability Resource Center (DRC) but address the gaps where autism-specific needs may be overlooked.
The DRC offers various academic accommodations for autistic students, but these are done confidentially and individually, Voss said. While important for privacy, this limits the DRC’s ability to build community among autistic students.
According to Larsen, the EAS program seeks to provide a variety of resources for autistic students, including peer support, mentorship, research experience, and a place for autistic people to feel safe and “where they can be themselves without having to mask and pretend they’re someone they’re not.”
Voss said the program offers one-on-one student mentorship, connecting students with other Cal Poly students who can provide support and advice. This mentorship can take the form of casual coffee meetups or simply checking in via text message. Ian Schaub, a mentor in the program, said that mentors and mentees meet for around two hours a week.
The program also puts on a number of events for students, both formal and informal. According to Larsen, the events include book clubs, exercise groups, magazine classes and study halls, among other group activities.
Another facet of the program is its research projects, where student research assistants are gaining real-world experience and simultaneously do research related to autism, according to Larsen. The current research project is focused on evaluating the success of the mentor/mentee program, according to EAS program and research assistant Max Hofer.
“Because the actual people we are studying are the people creating and running the experiment, it’s a much more valid form of research,” Hofer said.
The EAS program also seeks to address the disproportionate unemployment rate autistic people face through free academic and professional coaching, as, according to Larsen, only 15% percent of autistic people are fully employed.
The program is still in its beginning stages, though, as there are currently only eight mentees and 12 mentors and research/program assistants, according to Larsen. She said the program hopes to expand to include more areas of neurodivergence in the coming years.
However, Larsen said the grant funding that supports the program expires this year. The grant allows the EAS program to expand its research and pay student researchers for their time.
“We’re still trying to get more people involved,” Hofer said, “I hope to see more good things from the program and a lot more growth.”
Hofer said that people in the EAS program do not need a diagnosis to join and that students can choose whether or not to disclose any diagnosis. Students interested in learning more about the EAS program or joining the community can find details and resources on the program’s website.
“Having this program helps students know, ‘Hey, you have a safe place here,’” Voss said, “We’re empowering scholars who are autistic to make them feel safe and not in the shadows.”