Hobart and William Smith Colleges

12 February 2026 Redefining the College Experience By Tony Reid '79

Through a two-decade partnership with The Arc Ontario, Hobart and William Smith has opened classrooms, friendships and opportunities—proving that the college experience is richer when it’s shared.

It was now 20 years ago when the leader of The Arc Ontario approached Hobart and William Smith President Mark D. Gearan with an idea. How about establishing a connection between Arc and HWS in which young people from Arc – a national organization that helps advocate to include people with intellectual and developmental disabilities into the wider community – would experience college firsthand? They would attend classes, go to athletic events, join clubs, maybe have a campus job. But, more, they would get to know some students and experience HWS with and through them.

Gearan suggested that the Arc office be located in Coxe Hall, where his office resides, and it’s still there today. As Gearan intended, the Arc students have become an integral part of Hobart and William Smith.

“College has meaning. The whole experience has meaning to young adults,” says Associate Professor of Educational Studies Mary Kelly, who has been involved with the program almost from the start and who serves as a point person for the College Experience program at HWS. “For so long, young people with intellectual disabilities have been excluded from that experience. It’s all those subtle things that involve being on a college campus, all the kinds of social fabric that they were missing out on. It’s important for folks with disabilities to have those experiences, too.”

It turns out, however, that the benefits of this experience work in both directions. The HWS students involved in the College Experience program have gleaned as much from it as their peers in the program.

“I have made some incredible friendships the past few years,” says Alessandra Cimis ’26, the president of HWS chapter of Best Buddies, an organization founded at Georgetown University in 1989 by William Kennedy Shriver that has spread to college campuses throughout the country and to 54 countries around the world. The 15 Best Buddies volunteers at HWS work closely with the College Experience students.

“It’s honestly become one of the best parts of my week to hang out with the CE students,” Cimis says. “We eat lunch, do homework, sit in the library. I don’t see it as much different from my friendships with other HWS students.”

“The benefit it has had for HWS students has been really significant,” says Associate Professor of Educational Studies Diana Baker, who works with Kelly on building opportunities with the Arc program. Some of Baker’s students, who are studying to be elementary- and secondary-school teachers, experience firsthand “about programming for students with disabilities,” including the assistive tools they use and how they use them. And, of course, the HWS students learn by “interacting with people they wouldn’t have otherwise interacted with.”

“It’s important modeling,” she says. “I think it’s useful for my students to see the challenges of creating an inclusive environment and to see that it’s okay when it is not always done perfectly.”

Baker says she benefits, too. “Teaching inclusive classes is much more fun, and I think I do a better job when I have College Experience students, too.”

The importance of the program, as far as The Arc Ontario is concerned, is as practical as educational or personal. It’s about “job readiness,” says Casey Scharett, the College Experience Supervisor for Arc, which is located in Canandaigua and has a similar program at Finger Lakes Community College. “Part of the program is unpaid work experience,” Scharett says, citing opportunities for CE students to work at Saga, the HWS post office, the field house and the Davis Gallery. “They can use that as a reference on their resume.”

The whole experience, in class and out, makes these individuals “better job candidates,” she says, once they receive their certificates at HWS Commencement exercises in the spring and head into the working world.

Many of the College Experience students stay in touch with their HWS counterparts. The relationships they forge on campus – working out together, eating together, going to games together, having overnights in the dorms together – often extend beyond the boundaries of campus.

“My hope is that this connection will extend well beyond the college campus,” Baker says. “It changes your understanding of community, and who is part of our community.”

Those relationships are “the critical piece of all this,” Kelly says. “That’s the key ingredient. Working together in the class, having conversations, solving problems. Each bringing their strengths, their mutual curiosities. Some become lifelong friends.”

Top: Students in the College Experience program are recognized during the 2024 Commencement.