By Amber Dyer, Manager, Communications & Marketing
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Lucy Gafford, Program Director of the University of North Texas’ (UNT) Workplace Inclusion and Sustainability Employment (WISE) program, presented at the Dallas Regional Chamber’s year-end Education and Workforce Council meeting in December 2025, hosted by Bank of America at InfoMart, showcasing how the program uses vocational planning to prepare young adults with disabilities for the workforce.
Empowering students to discover what’s possible
To Gafford, UNT’s WISE program serves as a conduit through which high school and college students with disabilities are empowered to envision broader futures for themselves.
“Most of these students, when they come in, may not have an idea of what life is going to look like,” she said. “[After completing the program], most of the time, they walk away and say, ‘I didn’t know I could do this,’ and their families also have similar reactions: ‘I didn’t know my student was capable of living on their own,’ or ‘I didn’t know that they had this interest in a particular field or area.’”
Through services that combine academic research with practical workforce training, WISE helps students discover their capabilities and interests while focusing on transition services, professional development and competitive employment.
“[The program] works directly with Texas Workforce Commission and their Vocational Rehabilitation (TWC-VR) services division to develop and deliver the required training and credentialing for all employment services provided across the state,” said DRC Senior Vice President of Education & Workforce, Jarrad Toussant.
Services that help students embrace their future
The WISE program offers students multiple service options: Customized Trainings, UNT Embracing Neurodivergent Groups in Academics & Gainful Employment (ENGAGE), TWC-VR Credentials & Endorsements, Texas Beacons of Excellence, Transition Programs and the ACRE Certificate (Basic).
UNT’s Transition Programs give high school students hands-on career exploration opportunities. Students live on the UNT campus for one to two weeks during the summer, participating in activities that help them envision life after graduation.
“We talk about their life holistically,” said Gafford. “What do they want to do after they graduate from high school? Do they want to go to college? Do they want to go directly into the workforce? What opportunities are out there, and what jobs are available?”
The ENGAGE program embraces neurodivergent students by creating personalized plans to help reach their academic and vocational goals while they’re at UNT and beyond.
“We want to help them figure out how to connect [and] work together,” she said. “[The program] started as a Tuesday night group and has now [turned] into intensive, wraparound case management services, where we work with students one-on-one to develop their goals and what they would like to achieve professionally [and] personally around their academics.”
Gafford added that the program has blossomed beyond student-focused services to include an employee resources group for neurodivergent faculty and staff, as well as campus-wide training designed to foster an accessible environment.
“We collaborated with our HR system to figure out how we [can] have a more staff-friendly hiring process. So, we provided training for hundreds of different entities across campus, our libraries and our residential advisors to make sure they understood how to serve students and their peers when they were working with neurodivergent individuals.”
Creating impact that goes beyond the UNT campus
The university’s commitment to students doesn’t end at graduation. Through its partnership with TWC-VR, UNT developed a credentialing and endorsement program that trains employment service providers throughout Texas, raising the standard of job coaching and supporting employment services for graduates entering the workforce.
“We like to make sure people can get what they need, where they need,” said Gafford. “And so, we are training professionals in the field to provide [those services].”
The partnership extends to the “Texas Beacons of Excellence” Project, an initiative creating pathways for Texans with disabilities to transition away from subminimum pay and toward a competitive workforce.
“It is still legal if you have a 14(c) certificate to pay people with disabilities less than minimum wage,” said Gafford. “What we want to do is equip businesses to hire and retain qualified staff, and for any of these entities that have 14(c) certificates, find pathways for individuals out of subminimum wage and into Competitive Integrated Employment (CIE).”
Even as the partnership works to eliminate subminimum wage practices, people with disabilities face unemployment rates double those of people without disabilities.
“Nationally, the unemployment rate is 10.4% for people with disabilities, compared to 4.5% of those without,” said DRC Senior Vice President of Opportunity & Impact, Latosha Herron-Bruff. “And in Texas, the unemployment rate is 9.3% for people with disabilities and 4.7% for those without.”
This disparity reflects more than an economic issue; it reveals untapped talent, unrealized potential and the systematic barriers that people with disabilities can face.
“When companies invest in disability inclusion, they reap dividends in culture, productivity and reputation,” said Herron-Bruff.
In addition, Bank of America’s Senior Vice President of Support Services Marc Woods, noted that companies that employ workers with disabilities demonstrate notably higher retention rates.
“We have 65 employees here with disabilities,” said Woods. “They can bring their entire selves to work and feel free to express themselves in different ways, which leads to high employee engagement scores and high employee attention rates — we are 98% voluntary retention, with the other 2% being able to grow into other areas with traditional roles.”
Following the meeting, members of the DRC Education & Workforce Council toured Bank of America’s Support Services wing at InfoMart for a behind-the-scenes look at teams supporting key operational functions. The tour highlighted how intentionally designed roles and workflows enable employees with disabilities to thrive, strengthen workplace culture and drive strong retention.
Independence is the foundation of belonging
Overall, these programs share a common goal: fostering independence.
By bridging academic skills with employer needs, these initiatives help students with disabilities strive toward independence.
“True belonging for people with disabilities is independence,” said Dylan Rafaty, President & CEO of the North Texas Disability Chamber. “And to gain independence, we want to be able to have good money. We want to be able to live independently, go out in the community, support our family, our friends and so forth.”
For more information on the disability community, check out the DRC’s Disability Inclusion Toolkit.