Environments of ability include, secure, involve, and engage all students in a learning community. Creating Environments of Ability Carney Strange Campus discussions of disability inevitably turn to images of students who use wheelchairs negotiating a maze of curb cuts and out-of-reach counter- tops, along with insistent offers, from able-bodied, well-meaning peers, fac- ulty, or staff, of “Here, let me help!” The expanding enrollment of students with disabilities of all kinds at American colleges and universities presents a significant challenge, for both those whose disabilities shape their expe- riences on campus in challenging ways and those who seek to include them. Of concern to all is how the postsecondary community views these students and responds to their needs. Jones (1996) identified three “prevailing theoretical frameworks for understanding students with disabilities” (p. 348). First, from a “functional limitations framework,” each affected student is viewed as having a dis- abling condition, and this biological fact “[governs] the student’s sense of self, [explains] all problems experienced by the student, and [renders] the student in need of help and support” (Jones, 1996, p. 349). (Also see Fine and Asch, 1988, and Hahn, 1991.) Implied in this view is the need to reha- bilitate the individual as the remedy to challenges of disability. A second framework is the “minority group paradigm,” which focuses on issues of “alienation, marginalization, discrimination, and oppression” (Jones, 1996, p. 349). Accordingly, students with disabilities “may not be understood fully without considering consequences of minority group status, privilege, and the disabling environment” (p. 350). A remedy to exclusion is found in group solidarity, political action, and institutional advocacy. The third framework, “social constructivism,” emerges from an understanding that “much of what is believed about disability results from meanings attached by those who are not disabled and challenges the assumptions upon which those meanings rest” (p. 350). The social constructivist remedy to challenges NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT SERVICES, no. 91, Fall 2000 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 19 2