Woman with Down Syndrome Graduates from College

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Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. is the author of fourteen books including the forthcoming Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences. His other books include: In Their Own Way, 7 Kinds of Smart, Awakening Your Child's Natural Genius, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, and The Radiant Child. His books have been translated into 25 languages including Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, Danish, and Russian. He has taught at several San Francisco Bay Area graduate schools including the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has written for Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, Parenting (where he was a regularly featured columnist), The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and many other journals and periodicals. He has appeared on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, CNN, the BBC, and The Voice of America. Articles featuring his work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and hundreds of other magazines and newspapers. He has given over 800 keynotes, workshops, and lectures in 42 states and 16 countries. His clients have included Sesame Street, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Republic of Singapore, Hasbro Toys, and the European Council of International Schools. He is currently working on a novel about the disappearance of childhood. For more information about his work, go to www.thomasarmstrong.com.

01/02/2010

Woman with Down Syndrome Graduates from College

Katie Apostolides, who has Down Syndrome, graduated in 2009 from Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, Pennsylvania with an associate's degree in science. This makes her one of the first (if not the first) individuals with Down Syndrome to complete a post-secondary degree. She has had a number of news articles follow her academic progress, including one in the New York Times,which noted that "she is at the forefront of a wave of cognitively challenged students who are demanding, and gaining, a place on campus nationwide." The article noted that there are over 100 programs nationwide that place cognitively impaired students in post-secondary classrooms and dormitories (note, however, that students with intellectual disabilities still find it difficult to be accepted in residential programs - see, for example the story of one cognitively impaired student who was denied the right to live in a dormitory at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, as a result of a judge's court order). I'd be interested in hearing of other students with intellectual disabilities who are engaged in post-secondary programs, and/or about to graduate from them. Stories like Katie's serve as a wake-up call for those who place arbitrary limits on what people with Down Syndrome and other intellectual disabilities can achieve. It also serves as an inspirational model for all of us concerning what can happen when a person with a cognitive disability refuses to be limited by other people's expectations.

Posted at 05:48 PM in Intellectual Disabilities | Permalink

Tags: cognitive impairments, college, Down Syndrome, education, intellectual disabilities, learning, mental retardation, neurodiversity, post-secondary education, special education

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This caught my eye because I also find it interesting that the most
widely-published professors and researchers are not the ones teaching
students at their universities, almost out of necessity-- if you're
spending so much time in the laboratory or the library, you can't
teach a class full of undergrads at the same time.

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