College
Presidents Series:
President Lynda
Katz, Landmark College
By Emily Sherwood,
Ph.D.
Nestled
in the bucolic Vermont town of Putney, home to artists and
artisans, where the 250 year old Putney Inn recalls a more
gentile way of life unspoiled by fast food chains, Landmark
College sits on a tract of land once home to Windham College,
which closed its doors in 1978. From Windham’s ashes—or rather,
following its takeover by the federal government and subsequent
auctioning to a New York developer—Landmark College was
borne in 1984, realizing a dream of founder and visionary Dr.
Charles Drake, who had dyslexia and wanted to create a learning
environment specifically for students with learning disabilities.
Current
Landmark President Dr. Lynda Katz, only the third president
in Landmark’s
21 year history since she took office in 1994, looks back on
the tremendous growth and change she has helped to spawn since
arriving in Vermont from Pittsburgh, where she previously held
dual appointments at the University of Pittsburgh as Associate
Professor of Psychiatry and Education in the School of Medicine
and Associate Professor of Health and Rehabilitative Sciences.
When Landmark began with 200 students in 1984 (today’s
student body is double that size), “we were a boot camp
for students with significant learning problems,” says
President Katz. “They came as a last resort.” Their
sole purpose, she adds, was “to get into a ‘real
college’ as soon as possible.” President Katz’ mission,
which she deems successful, has been “to make a vibrant,
vital place, not a college of last resort. We focus on attracting
students from high school as a choice,” Dr. Katz asserts.
Indeed, though the college still functions as a “bridge
program” for students from other colleges—including
Williams, Holyoke, and Duke—who are struggling where
they are and need intensive help before returning to receive
their B.A. degrees, “we are focusing on attracting students
who will stay and get their A.A. degree, so that their next
college is one of choice rather than where they happen to get
accepted,” asserts President Katz.
Landmark’s approach is fairly simple, considering that it is one
of the only accredited colleges in the country designed exclusively
for students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (AD/HD) or other specific learning disabilities.
Students
must take a mandatory course in Cognition, Learning, and
Self, which teaches them about the brain, ways of learning,
study skills, and technology. “Students learn what ADD is, what a learning
disability is…and how their condition affects learning,” explains
Dr. Katz. Students must come to class with a laptop and learn
to use relevant software, such as the Kurzweil program
that converts printed material (which is scanned into a computer)
into an audio file, which the student can then listen to and
read on screen. While the range of additional courses offered
at Landmark mirror those at other colleges, it is the teaching
methods that make Landmark unique. “Our classes are exceedingly
interactive,” says Dr. Katz. “Our teachers know
how to do multi-sensory teaching and use meta-cognitive strategies.” And
of course, class sizes are small, rarely over 20.
No one is better qualified to carry out a vision of excellence in this
field than Dr. Katz, a nationally recognized expert in learning
disabilities and AD/HD in adolescents and adults, who continues
to operate her own practice as a psychologist by evaluating
students for special education accommodations in the surrounding
areas. Moreover, Dr. Katz has authored and co-authored scores
of reference articles, book chapters, and other publications
in her field, as well as a 2001 book entitled Learning
Disabilities in Older Adolescents and Adults: Clinical Utility
of the Neuropsychological Perspective.
Her hope for the future is that society
will begin to refocus special education funding on the adolescent
population. “We’ve
put so much emphasis on early intervention, but by and large,
these programs end at third grade,” explains Dr. Katz. “Yet
the cognitive demands on reading and comprehension don’t
really start till sixth or seventh grade. Adolescents with
learning disabilities are struggling because, although they
can decode, there’s more to special ed. than decoding.
They need to not just learn to read, but read to learn,” she
argues passionately.
Often
the true mark of success is to be able to share best practices
with others in the field, and that is exactly what Landmark
has done in its recent acquisition of a $1 million grant
from the Department of Education to develop a curriculum
that can be used by learning disabled students in community
colleges around the country. For Lynda Katz, it’s another step in the
long road ahead for the learning disabled community, and —given
her remarkable track record—she is the right person to
be leading the charge.#
