Fire alarms are meant to protect life and property, but for Nicollet Young OT ’25, the alarms caused anxiety.
She remembers sitting in a graduate occupational therapy class at Pacific University’s Hillsboro Campus when the ear-piercing buzz and strobes signaled a fire drill. For Young, who is autistic and has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, her mind and body couldn’t simply reset once the drill was over.
“I became so dysregulated that I could no longer engage in class,” said Young. “It ended up that I had nowhere to go to calm my body back down. I ended up lying in the backseat of my car for several hours before I was able to go home.”
Instead of amplifying her anxiety, the experience empowered Young to take action with a capstone project that will benefit Pacific students for years to come. To complete her Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree, Young researched sensory rooms and presented a detailed proposal to establish rooms on Pacific’s campuses.
The sensory room in the Tran Library on the Forest Grove Campus opened in February. A second room, in the library on the Hillsboro Campus, opens in March.
Sensory rooms are designed to help individuals regulate their emotions and reduce anxiety through various tools, such as calming and adjustable lighting, tactile objects, and fidgets. The sensory room in the Tran Library includes a swivel chair, a weighted blanket, and a white-noise machine to block out outside noise.
While the sensory room project had its origins in Young’s personal experience, she quickly realized that she was not alone. She met other neurodivergent students at Pacific, who shared their experiences and concerns.
“There wasn’t a space for us to go to regulate our bodies so that we could re-engage in class and become the practitioners that we could be,” said Young. “I talked to other neurodivergent students and knew that this was something they wanted and were really excited about. So I focused on the advocacy to make that happen and make it a space that has the voices of neurodivergent students at the center to make sure that it meets their needs and feels like a safe space for them.”
Young’s research highlighted other examples of sensory rooms at eight colleges across the U.S. While some rooms were essentially enhanced study rooms, the most effective spaces, she said, provided space and tools to allow neurodivergent students to re-regulate and then return to activities.
Graham Turner, assistant director of student wellbeing with Pacific’s Student Counseling Center, said that Young’s project meets a need for a significant part of the Pacific community. The university’s 2023 Healthy Minds survey revealed that 30% of students identified as having a disability.
“These rooms help us have a broader conversation about what it means to have a disability, how we accommodate these things, what those practices look like, and creating a shared understanding so that folks with disabilities are not left to do all of their advocacy on their own,” Turner said.
