LEGALLY BLIND: SEMO UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEE HANDLES STUDENT PROGRAM

The blinds are drawn in Dr. Karen Myers' upstairs office at Southeast Missouri State University. The lights are low.

She can see better that way.

The 44-year-old Myers is legally blind. But she can see up close.

She prefers written material in big type and writes with black Flair pens. She has requested a low-vision reader, a machine that electronically magnifies documents.

Outside she wears dark glasses. On bright, sunny days she wears several layers of dark lenses.

"Outside, for example, I sometimes can't see even a few feet in front of me," she said.

She uses a cane at times, primarily to alert on-coming traffic at busy intersections that she is visually impaired.

Her disability, however, hasn't deterred her.

Southeast hired her this summer for a newly created position, director of new-student programs.

Myers and her husband moved here in late July. Myers will focus on helping first-year, minority and transfer students make the grade. The goal is to improve the school's retention of students.

She also will serve on the university's disability advisory committee.

She worked as a private consultant in Peoria, Ill., on issues involving the Americans with Disabilities Act before taking her current job in late July.

Myers knows plenty about ADA requirements. The nameplate on her desk is ADA correct: raised letters and beneath that the words are also spelled in Braille.

She is the author of a book, "Meagan's Magic Mirror," which she hopes will be published next spring.

The main character of the book is a child with poor vision, a disability Myers and 15 members of her family have lived with for years.

Myers' family suffers from a degeneration of the retina. But unlike many who suffer from the disability, they don't have "doughnut vision."

Myers grew up in Quincy, Ill. She could see fine when she was a child. Her mother, brother and sister were visually impaired.

Their father didn't have the disability. "He was the driver. He took us everywhere," she said.

In sixth grade Myers was diagnosed to be nearsighted. Glasses corrected the problem.

She later got her driver's license.

But her vision grew worse. At a Springfield, Ill., community college, she couldn't see what was on the overhead projector. She often didn't see people and couldn't read tests.

She continued to drive until she was 25.

But two separate incidents led her to quit driving. She ran a red light and almost ran over a flagman where road work was being done. She didn't see the light or the flag man.

The disability, however, hasn't slowed down her career.

She has 15 years of teaching experience at colleges in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Prior to her consulting job, she worked for eight years at Western Illinois University at Macomb where she taught communication and directed disability support services and new-student programs.

She has a master's degree in communication from Western Illinois University.

Part of Myers' job at Southeast will be to assess why students come to the school and why they leave.

Last fall Southeast had 1,385 new students. But 172 of them didn't return for the spring semester.

Students cited financial reasons and wanting to be close to home as reasons for not returning.

Myers said she doesn't know how many of the new students will be returning this fall.

About half of all college students nationwide quit without obtaining a degree and never return to school, she said.

Myers will study the possibility of implementing a "cluster" program for first-year students in which they are grouped together in residence halls on the basis of similar academic interests.

"I want to look at combining the residential and academic programs," she said.

She also wants to explore the idea of a faculty mentor program that would allow students to work with teachers outside of the classroom.