By Jennifer Kiilerich
On a gray, blustery December day in Nashville, students piled coats and bags into the corner of a bright, windowed classroom inside Vanderbilt Peabody College’s Six Magnolia Circle. Lively chatter, applause and words of support bounced around the room, and holiday cookies lined a table by the door. It was presentation day for scholars in Next Steps participating in a collaboration with Peabody service-learning students, who were there to watch and cheer on their peers.
Next Steps at Vanderbilt is a four-year, post-secondary program for neurodiverse learners that prepares students for post-collegiate success and independence. With this innovative partnership, demonstrative of the collaborative learning approach at Peabody College of education and human development, students in Professor Leigh Gilchrist’s class are paired up as tutors with students enrolled in Next Steps. Through the course of a semester, tutors and tutees work their way through an experiential seminar selected by their Next Steps partner. A requirement for each junior and senior in Next Steps, the seminars teach core life skills like career readiness, apartment living, obtaining a learner’s permit to drive, and more.
The aim, said Lauren Bethune-Dix, assistant director and director of academics for Next Steps, is to provide real-world experiences and foster independence. In addition to tutoring, about half of the students in Gilchrist’s class, “Health Service Delivery to Diverse Populations,” design syllabi for future seminars. The class is a longtime favorite in Peabody’s Department of Human and Organizational Development, with the Next Steps collaboration launching a little over four years ago.
“The power of this partnership rests in the service-learning design,” said Gilchrist, associate professor of the practice of human and organizational development. “Reciprocity of learning and experiencing between the partners allows students with Next Steps to gain vital employability and life management skills, and the HOD students learn alongside Next Steps in how to design health-based programs that are responsive to the needs of the community and the goals of the partnering organization.”
Beyond the life management techniques of Next Steps and the academics of the HOD course, students in both programs gain skills such as working with various types of people, valuing different ways of learning, and adapting to better meet the needs of those in the collaboration.
Zachary Klinger, BS’25, said his experience in the class was transformative and led him to co-author his senior thesis with a student in Next Steps, focusing his studies (and now career) on centering the voices of students with learning differences. He now works as a special education math and science teacher in San Francisco, learning more about the community that he hopes to eventually serve through a startup that builds scalable educational technology.
Professor Gilchrist, Klinger said, “advocated for and introduced a model of service that was deeply community centered, emphasizing the voices of those that we were striving to serve.”
“Many of my students are headed into health-related fields,” said Gilchrist, “where success depends on strong interpersonal and program design skills, as well as a holistic and inclusive approach to patient well-being, including neurodiversity. These skills are valuable in any career.”
MEETING DUAL NEEDS
Bethune-Dix connected with Gilchrist in 2018 when she realized that maintaining a steady stream of peer tutors for her experiential seminars was proving difficult. Meanwhile, Gilchrist was seeking a service-learning partnership to provide her students with hands-on learning opportunities that addressed a community need. While higher education programs for neurodiverse learners are becoming more common, the young programs often have limited staffing. Tapping into an existing service-learning class is a solution that meets the needs of both parties.
Since launching the partnership, said Bethune-Dix, “we have worked to think innovatively about how to address issues, ways that we can strengthen the program through different approaches, different ideas, different collaborations. That’s why it keeps moving. That’s why it doesn’t get stale.”
Plus, the program has served as a model for other universities, with Bethune-Dix and Gilchrist speaking at recent conferences to share how such collaborations can boost the sustainability of both service-learning classes and neurodiversity-geared programs.
BUILDING FRIENDSHIPS ALONG WITH SKILLS
Elle O’Connor, a junior in HOD who was admitted to the service-learning class from the waitlist, said she is grateful to have befriended her Next Steps partner, Lindsey Holt. “It was really cool how motivated she was,” O’Connor said of Holt. “She was passionate about the topic, knew what goals she wanted to reach, and she set the pace. And it’s so much fun to have another friend on campus.”
Holt selected an experiential seminar about obtaining her learner’s permit. “I’ve had a really good time exploring all there is to learn about the rules of the road,” she said. She especially loved discovering the many road signs and then creating a Canva presentation about them. With support from O’Connor, Holt studied for and took several practice tests online. She hopes to apply for her permit soon.
And for students who opt to create syllabi, there is a unique opportunity to see the project through every stage of development: The following semester’s seminar class uses the syllabi, adding purpose to the work.
“In one semester,” said Gilchrist, “the service-learning partnership allows students to explore the key components of effective, collaborative, health-based program design—needs assessment, development, implementation and evaluation. That’s rare, and it’s why I value this collaboration so much.”
The design teams also gather feedback from scholars in Next Steps, sit in on tutoring sessions, and learn from Bethune-Dix about neurodiversity. It’s exciting, said Bethune-Dix, that students in Next Steps get to provide peer reviews for the syllabi. “They’re usually the ones always being evaluated throughout their lives. But now they’re the ones giving feedback, which is so valuable.”
Student Bella Guzman, a senior who graduated in December 2025, worked on a lesson plan about job onboarding. “Students in Next Steps really informed how we designed the syllabi,” she said. Guzman’s partner Sofia Serdar, also a senior, said her work on the lesson plan gave her insight into the job market she’s about to enter, and Jillian Ungar, who helped create a syllabus on AI tools for jobs, said that sitting in on tutoring was pivotal in planning an impactful lesson.
A LASTING PARTNERSHIP
As the students enrolled in Next Steps wrapped up their presentations, the room transitioned to a celebration. Hugs were given, snacks enjoyed and holiday wishes shared. New friendships—and life lessons—will outlast this project. Four years in, the collaboration between Next Steps and Gilchrist’s class has found a cadence that will carry it forward as a model program and poignant experience for Vanderbilt students.
“What our students learn makes them better in every space they enter.” – Leigh Gilchrist
“What our students learn,” said Gilchrist, “makes them better in every space they enter—more engaged citizens, thoughtful community members and advocates, and intentional individuals. It reaches far beyond the classroom.”
