Minutes
Core Committee
December 4, 2007
Members present: D. Anderson, M. Burchill, A. Ingberg, D. Sandgren, L. Sethre-Hofstad, G. Muilenburg, P. Fretham, S. Schwartz
The appeal from *&%$#* in which this student would like to count this student’s Religion 331X course as a Religion J course was set aside until the committee had a chance to review the course syllabus.
Monica Kersting, Director of Counseling Services and Disability Services, briefed the committee on the extent to which students with learning disabilities can be expected to successfully complete Core courses, especially foreign language courses. Several recent appeals involving students seeking to waive the foreign language requirement because of disabilities involving language processing prompted the invitation to Monica. She distributed the College policy guidelines for accommodating students with disabilities and briefly summarized them for the committee. The remainder of the meeting was devoted to discussion, including the following points:
What is the role of the core committee in facilitating the College’s policies toward students with disabilities? Should students’ appeals to the core committee be better handled in Monica’s office?
How much course accommodation must we make? Are we legally bound to accommodate these students with substitute courses?
Should the College make it clear to incoming students with disabilities that the college will make no exception to the required core courses? Monica stated that she would be comfortable stating to students with disabilities that the College would not make exceptions to the core requirements. Such students could then decide whether they wanted to attend Concordia or not.
Perhaps the issue of students with learning disabilities is similar to students who are admitted with very low reading and math scores (low ACT scores in general). In that case, would it not be best for the College to have a unified admissions policy?
The meeting ended without coming to any conclusions but the committee felt it was now better able to address these topics in the future.
Respectfully submitted,
David Sandgren