United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities is committed to providing equal access to a graduate theological education for qualified students with disabilities. This commitment is consistent with legal requirements including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. The seminary’s goal is to provide appropriate and reasonable academic accommodation to students who have a documented disability that materially limits one or more major life activities, have a record of such an impairment, or are regarded as having such an impairment.
Examples of reasonable accommodations include: access to class recordings, audio captioning and transcripts of lectures and class meetings, basic speech-to-text software, digital text sources compatible with adaptive software (e.g., text-to-speech), verbal descriptions of visual content, modified classroom seating, additional or longer class breaks, reduced on-camera time during Zoom class, modified class participation requirements, opportunity to complete make-up work for a missed class, request limited additional time to complete an assignment, additional time to complete an exam, and a minimal distraction exam environment.
The seminary reserves the right to deny a request for an accommodation if the documentation does not warrant the accommodation requested. Students who present a need for a modification of a course activity without adequate documentation of a disability may negotiate the modification with an individual professor if it does not conflict with the course goals and does not place an undue burden on the professor.
The seminary has the right to deny a request for an accommodation that would fundamentally alter the nature of an activity, course or program or pose an undue financial or administrative burden on the seminary. Receiving services or accommodations at another college, university, or testing agency does not necessarily mean that United will conclude that the student is disabled for purposes of the ADA and/or agree to provide the student with the same services or accommodations received at the other institution or testing agency.
Please see the Students with Disabilities section of the Student Handbook on the Academic Resources page for details on the procedure for receiving an accommodation for a documented disability.