New program will make college classes accessible for students with an intellectual disability
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Lake Superior College will be the first higher education institution in Minnesota to provide expanded college offerings for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities thanks to a new state grant.
The Inclusive Higher Education Grant supports Minnesota public colleges and universities seeking to match federal standards and best practices in creating or developing opportunities for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It was funded in 2023 and the first grant application cycle was in 2024.
“We need some help to kind of kick-start the process, and this grant is giving us that ability to do that,” said Linda Kingston, vice president of academic and student affairs at Lake Superior College.
Around 1,000 students with intellectual and developmental disabilities graduate high school in Minnesota every year, but, as of 2023, there were only about 90 seats in the three higher education programs in the state that offer enrollment to those students and are eligible to receive federal financial aid.
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Two of those three programs focus only on occupational training, without access to the kinds of major-specific college courses available to students without disabilities. The grant aims to change that.
Kingston led the charge towards inclusive higher education at Lake Superior College with broad support from faculty and staff. She could draw on personal experience: she has a daughter with Down syndrome who completed the BUILD program at Bethel University, a two-year residential program in St. Paul for students with an intellectual disability.
Since her daughter was young, Kingston, a longtime employee of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, has had her eye on an affordable and accessible inclusive higher education option for Minnesotans.
She saw her chance to develop one at Lake Superior College when the inclusive higher education grant became available last year.
“The reason that you don’t see a lot of these programs, in my opinion, is it’s a very expensive program and state institutions like Lake Superior, or other institutions in the Minnesota State system, have a tuition rate that doesn’t cover it,” said Kingston.
Lake Superior College received $200,000 in one-time funding, with the possibility of long-term grant funding available. Grant applicants can apply annually for and receive awards for up to 10 years.
Kingston said their first steps with the grant include hiring a grant director to lead the process, getting certified to qualify for federal and state grants, training faculty in universal design and student-centered planning, and looking for other funding to make the program sustainable.
Lake Superior College is also putting together an advisory committee of people who work in special education and vocational rehabilitation, as well as faculty and representatives from area businesses, to help figure out what the program is going to look like, what the core curriculum will be, and what options students can have towards preparing them for careers.
School officials hope the program, called the Program for Accessible College Education, will be up and running by spring 2026.
“There’s nothing like this up here,” said King.
“Our community needs more workers, just like every other community, and this is a population of individuals I think that’s been overlooked for a little bit too long.”
The right support
Kingston says people with disabilities seeking employment tend to end up in what are known as the three Fs: food, filth and flowers.
“You’ll see them, you know, wiping tables, doing recycling, taking trash, that kind of thing,” she said.
She said people with cognitive disabilities can be successful in a range of careers when given the opportunity to learn and grow. She thinks of a former student who took a job doing intricate wiring for a manufacturing company and was able to work faster than everyone else.
At school, she said one way to set students with intellectual and developmental disabilities up for success is providing peer mentors. Peer mentors don’t necessarily help with academic content, but act as accountability buddies, ensuring students go to tutoring, understand assignments and have the tools needed to advocate for themselves.
“So it’s not going to be a segregated class. Specifically, for these students, they’re going to be integrated into everything that we do,” said Kingston.
She said Lake Superior College has already partnered with employment agencies like Udac, Choice Unlimited and Trillium Services, which work with employers to take available jobs and break them down to be doable for someone with a cognitive impairment. The aim is to tailor the program to student preferences.
“We’ve shifted. Instead of creating a program for the students, we’re helping the students identify the program that they want and helping them get to it,” said Kingston.
Officials are still working out application and eligibility requirements. They expect to start with between two to five students in the next year and hopefully work their way up to 25 per cohort in the future.
Statewide impact
State officials hope more colleges will apply for the inclusive higher education grant and create opportunities like Lake Superior College.
“I fully anticipate that more students will be interested than they’ll be able to enroll, especially because you typically start out slow and with fewer students, and then build up over time, just so you're matching that infrastructure with the students,” said Mary Hauff, director of the Minnesota Inclusive Higher Education Consortium.
“Demand will outstrip supply,” said Hauff. “There already is chatter, if you will, in that part of the state where families and students are aware and they’re wanting more information now.”
The consortium is home to a technical assistance center mandated by state statute to administer the inclusive higher education grant and support colleges and universities in creating more opportunities for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Hauff said it’s important to have inclusive higher education programs around the state as there are a range of barriers that might prevent students with intellectual and developmental disabilities from attending a college far from home.
She said while few colleges applied in the first grant application cycle, she knows of at least five colleges interested in applying for the next round of grants and is excited for what’s to come.
“It’s creating that opportunity for post-secondary education for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities that don’t really have that opportunity today,” said Hauff.
To support and encourage applicants, the technical assistance center offers virtual workshops and webinars.
Applications for the inclusive education grant opened on Thursday, with submissions accepted until 4 p.m. CDT on May 15. The grant is available to qualifying public, nonprofit, or tribal postsecondary two-year or four-year institutions. Colleges have to match 25 percent, in-kind or monetary, to receive funding for the Inclusive Higher Education grant.
Hauff said if institutions applied for the maximum all 10 years, they could receive $1.4 million in total.
“There’s nobody in the country that has access to that kind of funding through the state,” she said.