When he applied for the job as assistant director in the Disabled Student Development office five years ago, Larry Markle knew very little about the field. What he could offer, he says, was a set of skills to complement those of longtime director Richard Harris. For his part, Harris said it occurred to him that he could teach someone about disabilities, but it would be much harder to teach someone the combination of communication skills and day-to-day work ethic that Markle brought to the job.

"My intuition was very good," Harris said recently. "In some situations it might have been hard to hand turn over the program when I retired, but I knew it was in good hands with Larry."

Harris retired on June 30, and Markle took over as the new director the next day. It's been a relatively seamless transition.

"I think we have a model program for disability services, and it would be foolish of me to make drastic changes to that model," Markle said.

Harris said he felt he had left the program in "good shape," but he expected Markle to put his own stamp on it in the future.

"I expect changes and improvements," Harris said. "It's an exciting time for the office."

Something that won't change is the role the Disabled Student Development Office plays as an  advocate for students, making sure every student, regardless of physical ability, has an equal opportunity to get an education.

"Our goal is to level the playing field to allow access for everyone," Markle said. "But we want to do that without lowering standards. We want to balance the civil rights of the student while protecting the standards of the university."

Ball State has long had a reputation for being accessible to those with disabilities, Markle said.

"The first piece of antidiscrimination legislation was passed in 1973, and Ball State was accommodating disabled students prior to that," Markle said.

That accommodation, and the physical design of the campus, have long been a draw for students with disabilities.  

"It's a nice campus for students with disabilities, just in its design and its size. For one thing, it's relatively flat, so that makes it easy to get around," Markle said. "And I've had friends who are blind tell me that everything really operates off McKinley Avenue, so that once you learn McKinley you can find almost everything."

Beyond its role assisting students, Markle points out that the office also aids faculty as they work with students who have disabilities.

As of Oct. 1, Ball State's student population included 486 students with verified disabilities. Of those, 353 had what Markle called "non-apparent" disabilities. Examples include attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, psychological conditions and chronic health issues such as asthma and seizure disorders.

When a student with a non-apparent disability comes into the office asking for accommodation, they are asked to provide a comprehensive, age-appropriate medical report that verifies how the diagnosis impacts them in an educational setting.

This verification process is the first of three steps in which the Disabled Student Development office helps faculty better serve students with disabilities. Additionally, the office works to find appropriate accommodations and ways for the accommodations to be made.

Markle wants to assure faculty members, however, that the integrity of the courses they teach is always assured.

"I would never ask a faculty member to waive a requirement that is vital to the course," he said. "If there is no reasonable accomodation that can be made, we don't make it possible by waiving the standards."

In the five years since he began working in the office, Markle, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Ball State, has learned a great deal about disability services. During his interview as part of the national search conducted for the director's position, he was asked what he would change about the office if he could.

"One of the first things I said was I would change the name of the office," Markle said with a laugh. "Which I realize is not an easy thing to do."

He explained that he is very conscious of using "people-first" language, and the name of the office puts "disability" first instead of "student." Because he feels it is important to focus on the student before the disability — as in "a student who is deaf" not "a deaf student" — Markle would like to see the name of the office put students first as well. Though he's not quite sure what a new name might be, he hopes the office reflects this philosophy in its daily contact with the students it serves.

That kind of thinking is just one example of the ways in which Markle will put his own stamp on the office as he takes it into the future and why Harris feels he has left the program in very good hands.

"The last four or five years I had someone to mentor, and then I had someone to hand it off to," Harris said. "It was just a bonus that we ended up being such good friends."