Judith Kolar: A PLuS for DePaul

A middle-aged woman with brown hair that hangs to her jaw line is sitting at her office desk, lost in introspection and pouring through documents on her desktop.

She is Judith Kolar, director of the Productive Learning Strategies Program—also known as PLuS—at DePaul University, and she is on a mission to make school and the workplace more accessible for students with learning differences.

The PLuS program is a free, year-round, comprehensive program designed to support DePaul students with documented learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and/or other associated disabilities. PLuS serves nearly 500 students on campus and will soon merge with the Office of Students with Disabilities which serves an additional 300 students.

The newly created department will be named the Center for Students with Disabilities and Kolar will serve as the center's director.

Her experience in school is one of the main forces that drove her to choose education as her profession and eventually to work for PLuS.

Kolar's demeanor is engaging and friendly, but honest and direct as well. She is a critic of the teaching methods of her schoolgirl years. She considers the herd-like teaching methods of the baby boomer generations to be deeply inadequate for accommodating the diverse learning styles of each individual.

"You were in a large class that was taught as a group, rather than recognizing the individual learning modalities of each student," Kolar said. "You were all taught the same way, and you either learned it the way it was taught, or you got lower grades than what you were capable of showing."

Learning disabilities are varying disorders that negatively impact learning. Simply stated, they impact the way a person processes and conveys information. They can affect reading, writing, and other key skills needed to be successful in academia and the workplace.

The most familiar LD to people is dyslexia, which makes reading more difficult. Having a learning disability does not affect a student's general intelligence. In fact, many students with this diagnosis have abnormally high intelligence.

ADHD is not considered a learning disability. It does, however, cause students difficulties in regulating attention, staying organized, and managing their time.

Among the accommodations PLuS ensures for its students are extended time on exams, exam proctoring in the PLuS office to provide a distraction-free environment, readers and transcribers for exams, course selection advising, note-taking assistance, assistive technology, student advocacy, priority registration, and clinician services (one-on-one weekly hourly meetings) with LD specialists.

"It's difficult to understand why some people need access to these services and others don't," said one PLuS DePaul senior studying communication. "Not everyone's brain is hard wired to learn the same way."

"People with LD or ADHD are every bit as capable of grasping important classroom concepts, but are left behind because of poor organization or abnormal information processing," the PLuS student said. "DePaul students are lucky to have access to someone like Judy, who truly understands these obstacles and wants to give these students a fair shot at college."

Kolar was raised on the west side of Chicago in the Lawndale neighborhood. She received her undergraduate degree at Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, a small teachers college in downtown Chicago—now National-Louis University. She soon after began teaching elementary school in Skokie.

Seven years later, she took an interest in new legislation that recognized students with learning disabilities, which she calls "the invisible disabilities." She left Skokie to work on her master's degree full-time at the National College of Education.

After receiving her master's degree, Kolar worked with the learning disabilities coordinator at the District 1 office in the Chicago Public Schools. While there, she tested students for learning disabilities, set up resource rooms for those who were diagnosed with them and prepared teachers and students how to use the resource rooms in teaching and learning.

Kolar was eventually asked by the district superintendent to set up a self-contained classroom in one of the area high schools. One of the elementary schools in the district had a small population of 8th grade students who were 14 and 15 years old. Some of them had 2nd and 3rd grade reading levels.

Her classroom proved to be a necessary resource for the struggling students to be able to transition into high school.

Kolar later took an interest in a grant-funded position at the Lincoln Park Zoo to develop an environmental education program for teachers and students, incorporating the zoo as a living classroom for learning. The two years working on the grant project would extend into a 17-year career at the zoo.

During those years, she developed award wining environmental education programs for teachers, students, families, adults and the casual zoo visitor spending an afternoon leisurely at the zoo. She worked closely with zoo curators to ensure key science concepts in ecology-based education programming, rather than just petting cute little animals for visitors touring the zoo.

After 2 years, Kolar was asked to create the first formal Education Department at the zoo and was appointed their first Curator for Education. Her work at the zoo, she said gave her an opportunity to greatly broaden her understanding of science, with which she developed a deep and lasting fascination.

"The most important thing I began to understand is that science teaches you how to think," Kolar said. "If everyone could learn the simple basics of scientific thinking or processes, their everyday decision-making would be so much easier."