Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Students in Western Kentucky Universitys Kelly Autism Program are offering a special gift to Bowling Green this holiday season.

These autistic students, who range from middle school to college, have printed more than 900 silk-screened Christmas cards featuring their own art. Packs of 10 cards are available for $10 through Friday.

According to Frank Kersting, a communication disorders professor at Western, this is the first year KAP has taken on this project, but they hope to continue it. They were aided by several other WKU student organizations, including the Print Club, the Student Council of Exceptional Children and the National Student Speech-Language Hearing Association.

The Kelly Autism Program provides three opportunities for young adults, Kersting said. One is educational support, where we work with schools and the university. Another is social leisure activities, and the third is school-to-work transitioning, which basically means job placement.

We have a high school student who is nonverbal, and when she was in middle school she would run down the halls screaming, he said. She worked for four straight hours with a smile on her face screening Christmas cards. I was touched.

Money raised from selling the cards will go toward developing a leisure art program for the students with the cooperation of art education majors at Western.

It was a wonderful thing, said Laurin Notheisen, an art professor at Western who, along with her students, helped the autistic students screen their prints. Many of my students are going into art education, and they had been encouraged by their art education advisers to participate. I think they really had a good time; everyone was focusing on participating and being involved and having a positive experience.

KAP, a program unique to Western that began with a donation from a Bowling Green family with an autistic daughter, has several other activities students can participate in to become active in the community. One, the programs Teen Council is made up of high school-age students who adopt families in local high schools family resource centers and raise money for them so they can afford Christmas gifts.

This project has proven to our students and parents that given a task thats appropriate, these students can become just as engaged as any other teenager, Kersting said.

Pictures of the six KAP Christmas cards are available online at www.wku.edu/%7Emarty.boman/. To order packs of cards, contact the KAP office at 745-8903.

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