Wednesday, January 15, 2025
2:00 – 3:30 pm ET

Appropriately Review & Respond to Requests with Confidence

More and more disabled college students are seeking to arrive at campuses with a variety of animals, from pets to Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) to Service Animals (SA). Given the ambiguity within these classifications, campus administrators are challenged to appropriately review and respond to requests while lacking clear understandings of just what is reasonable and how such determinations should be made.

Our expert presenter will draw from more than 25 years of experience as a Disability Resources Professional and a private consultant to offer practical insight into the requirements surrounding ESAs and Service Animals and identify necessary processes and key considerations for a successful campus animal policy. Protect your institution and support the access and inclusion needs of disabled students on your campus.

Explore some of the misunderstood aspects of considerations of ESAs, Psychiatric Services Animals, and Service Animals in Training (SAiT), as well as best practices for developing a collaborative process on your campus with the best interests of students and university stakeholders alike. 

Topics Covered

Gain crucial, actionable takeaways that will help you: 

• Evaluate, revise and/or update existing campus animal policies.
• Develop a check-list for intake interviews for animal-related accommodation requests.
• Understand the difference between service animals, emotional support animals, therapy animals, and personal pets and how these different types of animals may have different access rights on college campuses.
• Explore and comprehend relevant federal requirements, OCR guidance and enforcement trends, and potential state issues surrounding animals on campus.
• Better understand some often-overlooked aspects of ESA, SA, and SAiT processes and requirements.
• Strengthen key partnerships on campus to make the student/employee/visitor + animal experience a positive one and to reduce disability discrimination-related complaints.
• Understand how/when you can exclude an animal from campus public spaces.
• Develop a structured training program for contracted event personnel who may be working public events on campus and may encounter animals as part of the admissions procedure.
  

Presenter

Leigh Davis Fickling is the Deputy Director of the Title IX and Clery Compliance and an Accommodations Consultant at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Click here for full bio.