Skip to Content
 

Executive Function Support at Landmark College

Executive functions (EF) are the cognitive processes that regulate an individual’s ability to sustain self-directed action toward a goal. They include areas of the brain responsible for planning, cognitive flexibility, rule recognition, initiating appropriate actions, inhibiting inappropriate actions, and regulating emotions.

What does Executive Function Coaching look like at Landmark College?

Student and Teacher One-on-OneBy the very nature of its infrastructure and operational mission, Landmark College delivers an immersive EF support experience for students who learn differently. Our overall educational and residential model provides EF support in teaching and learning as well as in student life. EF supports are integrated within Landmark College’s unique approach to: 

  • Academic advising as a proactive and student centered model.
  • Instruction as anchored in principles of universal design.
  • Campus experiences that actively promote student self-determination.
  • First year learning courses geared towards metacognitive awareness.
  • Coaching that is individualized and promotes EF skills such as self-management, organization, motivation, and overall independence.
  • Transitions from high school to college to work.

How is EF support at Landmark College different from other institutions?

Traditional colleges are not engineered to manage EF challenges in students. They lack LC’s focused, integrated, yet global approach to student learning and operating differences. Learn more about how the college experience at Landmark College compares to those that provide “accommodations” for students seeking EF support.

A common challenge among college students—and of course students at Landmark College—is effective deployment of executive function skills and abilities. Landmark College provides EF support through advising, coaching, universal design-based pedagogies, and integrated technologies. Outside the classroom, LC provides EF support through our robust student life curriculum that includes highly trained residence hall deans (RDs) who understand the challenges related to still-developing EF skills.

Online Training in Executive Function for Educators

Are you an education professional who wants to learn more about executive function? Landmark College offers a Professional Certificate in Learning Differences and Neurodiversity with a specialization in executive function.


Ways that Landmark College supports executive function challenges

  • Students meet with coaches to develop EF related skills around self-determination and self-advocacy.

    EF coaching is individualized and promotes EF skills such as self-management, organization, motivation, and overall independence.

  • The Landmark College advising model is a hybrid of an advisor-guided and a student-directed proactive approach. The advising curriculum is student-centered and follows a developmental approach.

    Advisors at LC are experts at building students’ self-confidence and self-esteem as a precursor to strategies for academic success.

  • Faculty at LC are content experts and also have expertise in implementing principles of universal design (UD).

    The principles of UD include multiple means of representation of information, multiple means of engagement, and multiple means of expression. These principles provide a range of options and opportunities for teaching and learning, including ways of presenting information so that it is accessible to all students, and assessing learning and mastery through traditional and non-traditional means.

  • A cornerstone of EF support, these courses engage students in activities that promote metacognitive awareness and individual insight into learning. Students learn about neurodiversity and their own strengths and challenges, and strategies for accomplishing academic and non-academic goals.

  • The residence life model at LC is particularly conducive to EF support. RDs and RAs receive extensive training in supporting the EF needs of students.

  • In addition to coaching services, LC also offers student support programs that are specifically sensitive to the needs of students with EF challenges. These include Career Connections, the Drake Center for Academic Support, Counseling Services, and Athletics. While each of these service programs is not focused on EF alone, each is staffed by professionals who understand EF challenges and apply EF-supportive practices.

Back to top