ELLAS - Effective Learning and Logistics Academic Support

ELLAS offers a specialized academic support service designed to support university students, particularly those with neurodivergent disabilities such as autism or ADHD, in performing essential executive functioning, organizational, and communication skills.

At ELLAS, we pair a university student with a Professional Academic Support (PAS) specialist who works individually with that student to:

• Develop a customized academic support system
• Create and maintain schedules for the student’s course load and personal needs
• Strategize long-term and complex project completion
• Enhance time management and organizational skills to increase efficiency, consistency, and effective learning
• Provide accountability through partnership
• Produce consistency and dependability through long-term personal relationship
• Facilitate written and spoken communication and self-advocacy
• Utilize university resources effectively
• Focus on working authentically with the university rather than changing the individual student or masking their differences
• Normalize ongoing support as needed while developing skills rather than removing scaffolding prematurely

We measure success by three metrics:

1. Improved grades, course completion rate, and graduation rate
2. Increased skill and information retention as a foundation for future learning
3. Reduced stress and anxiety resulting from academic performance and workload

Executive Function and Organization

• Scheduling and Time Management
  • Plan daily, weekly, monthly, and full semester workload
  • Guide calendar creation and maintenance
  • Check in regularly to ensure progress
  • Structure prioritization of tasks and deadlines
  • Coach strategies for task initiation and completion
• Project Management
  • Break large projects into manageable, single-session tasks
  • Create timelines for long-term assignments
  • Follow through on progress

Transactional Communication

• Written Communication
  • Manage incoming email communication to ensure important information, instructions, tasks, and deadlines are not overlooked
  • Assist with email drafting
• Spoken Communication
  • Coach self-advocacy interactions
  • Script talking points for important conversations
  • Role-play to prepare for important conversations

• We don’t do any of the assignments or take any of the quizzes or tests, but we will help schedule them through disability services and discuss them afterward to identify opportunities for more effective academic support.
• We don’t tutor for individual courses, although we will help a student find out what tutoring services are available, help them set that up, and put it in the schedule as needed.
• We don’t write papers but we will break them down into manageable pieces and timeline them out in advance, as well as help identify and utilize writing services on campus.
• We don’t do research but we will connect a student with a campus librarian who is willing to provide general library orientation and specific research guidance.
• We don’t cook or clean, but we will help a student schedule household chores and personal hygiene and prioritize healthy exercise, sleep, and nutrition.
• We don’t provide physical or mental health counseling or therapy but we will help locate and utilize those services on campus. It is worth noting that staying on schedule and feeling confident in academic routines and success is an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety.

• Customized and consistent support for individual needs
• Focus on performing crucial executive functioning skills
• Stress reduction through improved organization and time management
• Relationship-based to provide continuity, build trust, and allow the type(s) of support to evolve with the student’s development
• Provide structure without sacrificing choices and agency
• Aligned with research-based best practices
• Informed by autistic experiences and voices
• Empowerment of students to achieve their full academic potential

“If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.”

“Autism is a broad spectrum of unlimited possible combinations and no two autistic people are the same.”

No program that is one-size-fits-autism is going to be comprehensive and customized enough to be effective. Every academic support has to be tailored to the specific roadblocks experienced by individual autistic students, agile enough to continue evolving as the autistic student develops in their college career and encounters different challenges, and streamlined enough not to add more time or stress because all college students are already pushed to their time and stress limits and autistic students tend to need more time to accomplish every task and are already functioning at a higher stress level than most neurotypical people can imagine.

Some universities have, or are developing, specific programs to support their growing number of autistic students, a few of them included in tuition but most of them incurring significant additional costs. Every effort and every program is better than nothing at all.

• Most of them identify primarily the social skills autistic students may wish to develop in order to feel accepted by peers and professors. This can be important, but it is generally not the most critical academic support need for most autistic students.
• Many of them promise to develop job-oriented skills to help with the transition from college to career – also important but immaterial if the student cannot succeed in enough individual classes to maintain their funding and earn their degree.
• Some of them offer concrete assistance in daily living skills like personal hygiene, laundry, sleep schedules, eating what is available in the dining hall when it is available and not when they are hungry, etc., that parents of neurotypical students take for granted but parents of autistic students know can make or break that first year.
• A few of them even offer assistance with “executive functioning” by which they mean help with time management strategies. This is in fact one of the most urgent needs of many autistic university students, but it goes far beyond what a few workshops or even a weekly coaching session to plan the daily work load can hope to achieve.

To learn more about how ELLAS can support your academic journey, please contact us for a free personalized consultation. Email zan.raynor@ellas.education to schedule your appointment.

In addition to customized academic support during university semesters, ELLAS offers consultations to strategize how to scaffold autistic students during high school to ease the transition to college as well as assistance navigating the college application process.

ELLAS also provides professional development to college and university professors to learn how to create courses that are more accessible to neurodivergent college students and how to support those students should they struggle in these courses.

Read a case study that illustrates one example of how ELLAS’ Professional Academic Support can work for an autistic university student.

Read an overview of academic supports for autistic university students by Marci Wheeler through the Indiana University’s Resource Center for Autism.

Read a review of the literature on existing university support programs by Lori A. Wischnewsky, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Texas State University.