Although Erica Ziegler will graduate with an education degree that allows her to teach visually impaired students, there may not be many after her.
A hold has been placed on admissions to the special education program focusing on visually impaired students while it is being reviewed by college officials and university administrators.
“Their big thing is to just reassure everybody that’s enrolled that they’re going to finish, but they’re not answering any other questions,” said Ziegler, a special education senior. “The students really aren’t pleased with the reception from the administration.”
But with enrollment hovering around 30 students and no tenure-track personnel working in the specialty, university officials say it needs to be investigated.
“We do this when we have some situation in which we have students in the program who need to be served, but we are not necessarily sure to what the resources will be for new students,” said Barbara Steidle, assistant provost for undergraduate education.
Steidle said the review comes after the resignation of Professor Susan Bruce, who has championed the program for nearly nine years.
“It has one faculty member,” she said. “One is always essentially reliant in finding people in order to keep such a program open.”
While the program will not be greatly altered for those who already are enrolled, it could be months before they know if any new students ever will join the program, or if it will be eliminated.
Although administrators are attributing the program’s endangerment to her resignation, Bruce said she is worried for the sake of the program at MSU.
Eastern Michigan University and MSU have the only two visual impairment education programs in the state. MSU’s is the only program in the Midwest to include a program for the blind and deaf.
“You have to have teacher programs to produce the teachers,” Bruce said. “People tend to fear blindness still. They’re not attracted to it. You might have had somebody in your class with a milder disability, but blindness is less common.”
Bruce said she is afraid to see the growth of the program crippled by the halted admissions just a short while after a $1.5 million grant was awarded to the department to aid in recruitment.
More than six students were turned away because of the enrollment freeze.
But MSU students and faculty aren’t the only ones fearing the program’s demise.
Carol BrunDelRe, a visual impairment teacher at Lansing’s Cumberland Elementary, 2801 Cumberland Road, said her program would suffer without the help of MSU students.
About six student teachers and interns work with her every school year, learning the trade and diversifying her classroom.
“It’s been wonderful with us,” she said. “We give them experience with students and they give us new technologies. I’m very worried.”
Other areas also will suffer if the program is lost, BrunDelRe said. While the demand for visual impairment teachers is not always high, it has been increasing recently.
“They’re going all over this area of Michigan,” she said, referring to the visual impairment teachers who travel to aid students. “Without them, that won’t exist for a large area. As far as numbers go, we need to have teachers trained.”
The National Federation for the Blind has caught wind of the program’s troubles and will be on campus June 8 to lend its support.
BrunDelRe and others hope a rally in front of the Administration Building will bring back support for the program.
But with one more year to go, Ziegler still isn’t sure the rally will help enough to allow her to enroll for visual impairment graduate studies at MSU.
“I have a feeling there will be a lot of people,” she said. “I’d like to think it would help, but at this point, I don’t have a whole lot of hope that Michigan State really cares.”
Jamie Gumbrecht can be reached at gumbrec1@msu.edu.
