Welcome to THRESHOLD's understandingautism.org homepage

100% of your contribution will go to either school equipment purchases dedicated exclusively to children with Autism or our sliding scale scholarships for families in need. You may indicate your preference. If you do not wish to make a direct contribution, you may also make a contribution of toys are other needed equipment or make a direct contribution to United Way or other charitable foundations with a request that the funds are to be used to support Threshold's mission. Then they will oversee the use of your gift to us.

We do NOT solicit and do NOT accept any monetary or in-kind charitable donations from our past or present family clients or their relatives. This ensures the ethical treatment, egalitarian status, equitable resource exchange and therefore, the authentic inclusion for all the families who may seek our services. Families who still wish to support the Autism community may make contributions to the foundations which have supported Threshold's family and student programs, to thank them. We can provide you with a list.

Our Social Action Principles

THRESHOLD does not discriminate on the basis of racial designations, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic class in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and other school-administered programs. We seek to include all families and any children, students, and adults with and without Autism, along the fullest spectrum of human development, without regard to the person's levels of knowledge, awareness, skills, and ableness.

In addition, we proactively pursue our own and other allied organizations' growth in our awareness of the nature of social and able diversity of human beings and the nurturing of cultural and functional inclusion.

To better succeed at Threshold's Autism mission we actively work towards three progressive outcomes: 1) building authentic understanding between, and more negotiable community spaces for, all of those of us who may be struggling to live, work, and cope with Autism; 2) identifying and increasing access to adapt-able developmental practice intervention strategies for people of able-loss, and; 3) engaging in building more power-aware and mutually empowering relations between all our social and able communities.

We believe that this work is not about either side of any liberal or conservative group debates about "political correctness" but rather, it represents a biosocially ethical way to truly be together in creating a more humane world for us all. Therefore, we feel that participation in our mission of promoting the authentic inclusion of people with needs for adaptive communication systems and environmental structure may be the greatest charitable contribution anyone can make to everyone who must live, work and cope with Autism. We hope you will chose to join us on this path--it is not a job it is an adventure.

Threshold provides public speakers on the topics of Autism and able diversity and the economic, practical, and social benefits of providing more adapt-able accommodations for our entire human community. The costs to us all are very low and the mutual benefits are endless.

Our Board Members and Officers

Threshold's leadership has sprung from the ranks of enthusiastic and committed individuals in the community. The Board of Directors is comprised of leaders in government and business from the professions of law, accounting, management, and business training. Currently the Board of Directors has three members, and we are seeking a fourth member. The founder's goal has been to establish a Board that functions efficiently and effectively as a team in the supervision and achievements of clearly defined fiscal and administrative outcomes towards achieving our mission. The Board of Directors meets for official meetings and smaller teams meet for project oversight. The new focus on tuition/customer programs vs fees/client based clinical services means we need to pursue individuals with small service business perspectives and experience to add to our current Board and Officers.

Elizabeth Harchenko is the board chair. Ms. Harchenko, formerly Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the State of Oregon, is now Director of the Oregon Department of Revenue. She worked for the Department of Justice since 1979, specializing in the area of taxation. Her other civic and community activities include: Board Directorship in both the Salem Rotary Foundation and the Salem Rotary Club, where she chairs the Mentor Program Committee; Oregon Women Lawyers, where she has served on the board of directors and as coordinator of the Mentor Program at Willamette University College of Law; and the Marion County Bar Association. She has offered her abilities in non-profit leadership, organizational ethics, problem solving and charitable funding in her role at THRESHOLD.

Clifton Pieters is also a member of the board. He has provided the business management training and human relation skills that are essential for our success. His is presently the owner of a Total Quality Management Company based in Portland, which provides management and leadership training for business throughout Oregon. He was formerly the head instructor of trainers for Byron Thompson & Associates which provides the Dale Carnegie programs in Oregon. He is the author of the Advanced Communication Technology Workbook and writes a monthly column on the leadership aspects of TQM for professional and trade journals around the country. For the past fifteen years he has conducted executive team-building, leadership communications and training worldwide.

Les Margosian is a member of the board and a Certified Public Accountant, who worked for the Public Utility Commission as an auditor for 11 years. His community and civic activities include Salem YMCA Youth Fund, former president of the Save the Elsinore Board, former board member of Salem City Club, and volunteering for a number of other organizations. He has also been entrusted by the OSCE responsibility as a U.S. government elections supervisor in trouble spots around the world such as Bosnia, Nicaragua, and other locations in Europe, Africa, Central and South America. Mr. Margosian provides the accounting and business acumen necessary for THRESHOLD's sound financial management.

Sharone Lee holds the office of President of THRESHOLD's corporation. Ms. Lee is the founder, and currently serves as the Executive Director/CEO. She has worked as a trainer and consultant to family and service providers in the field of Autism education since 1991. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in visual communication design and now specializes in creating augmentative visual communication systems for individuals with special sensory, communication, social development needs. In addition, Ms. Lee has a B.S. in Developmental Research Psychology, and a Masters Degree in Human Development and Diversity with a specialization in Leadership in Education and Human Services: Parent/Community Work. She is currently working on her doctoral degree in Human and Organizational Development, with a focus on Able Diversity, Advocacy, and Ableism. Over the years, she has also received over 500 hours of training in early childhood development, including developmental parenting for typical families, cognitive-developmental interventions for children with Autism at the Language Communication Center in Boston; Division TEACCH at the University of North Carolina; and transdisciplinary therapeutic approach of Giant Steps in British Columbia, a based on a model program for children with Autism in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Furthermore, she has also pursued organizational consultation from other Autism programs across the US such as Judavine in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as university sites and community providers in England, South Wales, Australia, and Japan.

Ms. Lee has pursued ongoing training in human relations, self-management, community conflict, and communications and the administration of therapeutic programs through a variety of sources. Ironically, her adult life long e xperience in business operations and visual communication design contained the critical capacities for the new creative paradigm that was needed to design and launch THRESHOLD. Ms. Lee has shown the kind of commitment during personal and professional adversity that has ensured THRESHOLD's success and continuation. She is committed to a life of human service.

In recognition of her service to the community Ms. Lee has been awarded: The 2001-2004 Editorship of The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon Chapter of the Autism Society of America, Advocate of the Year 2002 from the Oregon ARC of Marion County; 1995 Marion County Health Advisory Board Award for Services to the Handicapped; 1993 and 1995 Children's Guild Award for Services to Children with Special Needs; and was recognized by the Statesman Journal as the honorary Volunteer of the Year Holiday Issue in December of 1993. In her young life before Autism, she was also an award-winning athelete, designer, and public speaker, which are experiences and energies she brings to her service work.

Joseph Laronge has served as Secretary/Treasurer for most of our years of operation. Mr. Laronge has also served continually as a parent volunteer in our community based-program activities for young adults. Mr. Laronge is an Assistant Attorney General at the Oregon Department of Justice in the Tax and Finance section. He is the father of a young man with Autism and gives hours of his daily schedule to help ensure the success of THRESHOLD's mission by supporting the success of its people. His professional understanding of the funding ramifications of tax measures in Oregon have helped give our Board a future vision of the full importance of the availability of private nonprofit services in Oregon's social service community.

Our Technical Resources

We have found that by using the well-established and field tested foundational structured teaching model in combination with compatible visual and written teaching strategies and our own field-tested holistic thematic curriculum we have been able to consistently and effectively pursue our mission in our geographic area for children along the full spectrum of Autism and related disorders. We have also been able to develop trainings and demonstration model sites to help share our model with hundreds of family and professional providers. Through these innovative developmental intervention strategies and strong program and operational management THRESHOLD'S services and programs continued to increase in their quality and effectiveness despite annual budget cuts totaling over 66% in the second and third years of operation at Step-Up. We attribute our initial survival and continued success directly to the technical training and consulting we received from The University of North Carolina from 1992-1995. We wish to thank the following people and organizations for our ongoing development.

These individuals or agencies have directly supported THRESHOLD with Autism training and consultation to achieve competence and excellence in all our training programs and services:

The names and organizations that are listed above to acknowledge and credit all those who have participated in the development of Threshold as an organization and are "For Your Information" only. They do not necessarily represent an endorsement by these individuals or their agencies.

THRESHOLD began several years of extensive training in Autism and Structured Teaching in 1991. After implementing Structured Teaching and participating in a three year mentoring program, in 1994 we achieved official TEACCH affiliate status for our direct service programs and notice of having the reached the equivalent of certified levels of quality for our young children's intervention program component. As a smaller private organization we were not eligible for public program certification. Since 1993, we have provided workshops and consultation for family and professional providers across Oregon to help others initiate the implementation of th receptive and expressive communication practice components of the Structured Teaching System with great success. We also continue to incorporate other developmental strategies that complement the structured teaching strategies and that are fully compatible with its approach.

Please note that The University of North Carolina's Division TEACCH provides the only official "TEACCH" training and consulting programs, therefore, we always recommend training and consulting with Division TEACCH, whenever it is available or possible for individuals and agencies wanting to provide comprehensive Structured Teaching programs in a comprehensive life span model. You may go to the TEACCH site to get information about training: www.unc.edu/depts/teacch and www.teach.org or email to: teacch@unc.org to request more information to be mailed to you. Because the numbers on the UNC campus frequently change, please use directory assistance to ask for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Raleigh N.C. Campus Directory Information line area code (252) and ask for the Division TEACCH office. This will help you quickly and easily get the current and correct number.