Serving Neurodiverse Students

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Peter Eden is president of Landmark College, which serves students who are on the autism spectrum or who have dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, or other learning disabilities. He chats with The Chronicle about Landmark’s pedagogical approach, the changing culture around neurodiversity, and the rewards and challenges of the college’s mission.

TRANSCRIPT:

ALEXANDER KAFKA: Hi, I’m Alexander Kafka. I’m editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Idea Lab section. And my guest today is Peter Eden, who is president of Landmark College, in Putney, Vermont. Landmark is not just another small New England college; it serves students who have dyslexia and other learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, or students who are on the autism spectrum. To begin with, Peter, can you tell me just a little bit about Landmark? How many students do you have?

PETER EDEN: Alex, we have about 450 residential full-time students. And as you mentioned, they’re all neurodiverse, typically with dyslexia, ADHD, or ASD.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: And because there’s a lot of personal attention to each student, you don’t have a typical student-to-faculty ratio. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

PETER EDEN: That’s correct. We have about 200 faculty and staff to serve those 450 students. We don’t infantilize them. We are allowed the luxury of small class sizes, of a really robust student-affairs operation outside the classroom, executive-function coaching, individual advisers, a lot of people who get it for these bright college-capable students with LD.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: Now a lot of general-population colleges are trying to serve neurodiverse students. And they have found, first of all, that it’s difficult, and second of all, that it’s very expensive. Are there lessons that you think they can learn from Landmark’s experience, or are there things that you think just by definition they can’t do as well on a mainstream campus?

PETER EDEN: Well, first of all, there are many students with neurodiversity who do just fine on some of these larger campuses, but a great many of them do fail. I would say these other institutions could learn a lot from Landmark College in terms of our pedagogy and also our practices, such as social-pragmatics programs for students on the autism spectrum. So there’s a lot that could be learned from this natural laboratory, which is Landmark College.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: With the expense involved and the really personalized education, how do you deal with the pressures on your tuitions and your overall expenses?

PETER EDEN: It’s not easy, of course. The college, in terms of the average in net price the family would pay, is quite competitive. However, indeed, with 200 faculty and staff for 450 students and all of our services, the sticker price is high. Again, we’re a nonprofit. So everything goes back into our model. We provide about $8 million a year in institutional aid. Eighty percent of our students will get aid from us. And access to this model has always been a priority since it started 32 years ago.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: One of the phrases that comes up a lot in literature around Landmark is universal design. And I was wondering if you could give us a kind of quick overview of what that means in terms of the curriculum and other aspects of education there.

PETER EDEN: I’d love to. Universal design is generally a multiple means of presentation of content in a given course, of multiple different modalities for delivery, from the student and taking into consideration the heterogeneity you may see in any learning environment, the multiple learning disability or difficulty profiles in any learning environment.

So understanding from the very beginning that you have students with various strengths and various challenges. And we’re also building this into our web-based online programming, as well. So this allows the instructor to meet the different, more diverse students where they are.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: And then web-based teaching. That’s an area of expansion for you, right?

PETER EDEN: That’s correct. We are engineering our own courses with a lot of universal-design approaches online. And we deliver them to some juniors and seniors at LD-focused prep schools for college credit. It’s part of a dual-enrollment program, and it’s been quite successful thus far.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: And those schools are just in your region or elsewhere too?

PETER EDEN: In the Northeast right now. We hope to scale this up a bit. And it allows the students with neurodiversity to learn how to learn online, generate some college credit but also some confidence and perhaps embolden them into attending college when maybe they thought it was out of reach.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: Now when Landmark started in the mid ‘80s we just didn’t hear as much, especially about autism and even other learning disabilities. And the whole culture now has changed quite a bit. It’s something in TV shows and movies that we see all the time. Does that change the way students or parents or others look at your mission at Landmark?

PETER EDEN: It’s changing very, very swiftly, Alex. Indeed when I arrived six years ago we didn’t use the term Asperger’s at the time. It wasn’t used very much. And now, especially for the young students, this is just part of life. It’s not so much of a shame or stigma associated with it. And this cultural phenomenon we’re seeing is wonderful, but it also can romanticize LD. And suggest to a viewer that there’s an automatic compensatory genius to someone with neurodiversity, that’s not fair necessarily.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: As opposed to just a different way of learning.

PETER EDEN: Exactly. And learning and operating.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: Last, I want to touch a little bit about on your background. You came from a cell-biology and biotech background. How did you become interested in LD education at Landmark?

PETER EDEN: I started off as a molecular biologist, and I worked in the biotech industry for a while. And it’s fascinating. But I missed the campus environment. I wanted to teach. And my first job involved some administration. From there I became a college dean. And I loved the idea —

ALEXANDER KAFKA: And where was that?

PETER EDEN: That was north of Boston, at Endicott College. Wonderful five years, and I looked for the next opportunity. And I never thought I’d be lucky enough to find such a young school which needed to grow and evolve. So I’ve been able to help the great faculty and staff build in baccalaureate programs, web-based learning. And as the acorn turns into the oak tree, this was the expectation for this important college.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: So, final question. If there is one priority for Landmark and for the kind of education that you provide there, what would it be?

PETER EDEN: I would say being able to deliver our model to the students wherever they are in the United States.

ALEXANDER KAFKA: Got it. Thank you very much for your time. It’s great having you here.

PETER EDEN: Thanks, Alex.

Alexander C. Kafka is a senior editor and oversees Idea Lab. Follow him on Twitter @AlexanderKafka, or email him at alexander.kafka@chronicle.com.