Parling says she was denied her degree due to a 0.7% grade margin. What happens next for the nursing student?

By Emmett Roman
Staff Reporter

For the past three Board of Trustees meetings, Melissa Parling, a nursing student at LCC, who is a registered nurse assistant and has worked in the medical field for years, has come to make a public comment. Parling has stated that she is being denied her nursing degree due to a 0.7% difference from the passing grade on her final exam. She claims that due to an improper testing environment, she failed the exam by a 0.7% margin.

In her first address to the board, Parling had one of the members of her nursing program cohort with her to speak to the situation. “I'm here in support of her and as a firsthand witness to the significant problems that we experienced during the fall semester that compromised the success of our cohort,” Susan Garmo publicly stated in the March 16 meeting. “Significant problems were experienced in the testing environment. A violation occurred when the testing center staff entered our cubicles and deposited a note on our desk during the exam.” According to Garmo, this broke her and her cohort’s focus within the exam, causing a critical hinder to their success.

“Furthermore, the students of the cohort were placed at a distinctive disadvantage and received testing material from a previous cohort’s required test text instead of the F.A. Davis textbook identified in our syllabus for our cohort,” Garmo continued.

According to Garmo, there was a miscommunication between the staff at the testing center and the nursing program. Several students in the nursing program have accommodations that require them to take tests and exams in distraction-reduced spaces in the testing center. An issue arose when the computers in the testing center needed an update for the students to take the Kaplan test. That update took time to complete, which led the test to be delayed. Garmo stated that the cohort eventually was able to take the test a week later than initially planned, which hindered their time to study new material for the next exam. The students who did not need to use the testing center for the exam, however, were able to move along at the scheduled pace. This raised a civil rights concern, as the disadvantage fell to the students who had accommodations due to a disability.

After the March meeting, Parling went to the next board meeting in April to continue asking the board to intervene and grant her the degree she feels she earned. “I am a graduate of Lansing Community College’s practical nursing program,” Parling began in her third appearance, at the May 18 board meeting. “And I should have been at commencement earlier this year. But I was not. And, despite my continued speaking, a correction to my grade has not been made.” Parling also stated that she was there to provide the board with a notice about the civil rights investigation she has initiated.

Because this matter is currently subject to an active federal civil rights and retaliation investigation by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights under OCR Case #15262232, Parling was not able to comment on what is happening within the case or what happened in the testing center the day she took her final exam. Pending OCR cases have not been updated since Jan. 14, 2025, on the U.S. Department of Education site. However, two previous disability-related cases were filed against LCC as recently as Dec. 14, 2022.

Parling believes there are two reasons for the nursing program’s failure. The first reason is due to “the systemic faculty staffing vacancies and emergency recruitment campaigns that have cycled through the LCC job portal since February 2026,” Parling mentioned in email. There are currently two open non-student jobs in the clinical nursing department on LCC’s job portal. Parling also stated that she believes that the administrative rationale behind senior management utilizing personal, out-of-channel communication methods to contact active federal complainants has contributed to the problems she is facing from the college.

In Parling’s public comment to the board in April, Parling stated how one of LCC’s nursing professors is allegedly under investigation  by the state currently. She did not state any specific names. However, the popular professor review site Rate My Professor reviews show many negative results for LCC’s nursing faculty. One reviewer stated about Teri Logghe, “This professor has no remorse for students trying to move forward in the Nursing program. She used the professor teaching pharm as a scapegoat to fail the entire cohort.” Another reviewer claimed that Logghe was “one of the worst professors I have ever experienced. She lacks compassion for her students and often contradicted herself between lectures and exams. Record every lecture to make sure you can go back and listen to things from class. When questioned, she mostly is unable to give rationales for her answers leaving students confused.”

There is also a story posted by an anonymous user claiming to be a spring 2022 alum of LCC’s nursing program on AllNurses. “I would be hesitant going to LCC nursing program,” the post reads. “I am warning you the current teacher for 241 (hired in 2020) which is the last medsurg class (nursing practice 3) you take before graduating is awful. This professor is now ironically also the director of nursing.” The post is dated November 9, 2022.

That post also explained that “the professor misdirects what to study for exam. Is nice enough to make you feel like you’re ready for exam then you get a 70% or less doing everything they said to do to study.” The post alleges that the questions on the final exam have “incorrect typing and missing words.” The anonymous user furthered alleged that “if the majority of the class is failing the dean and the professor does nothing to curve grades or give terrible questions back.”

Director of Nursing Teri Logghe and the LCC Office of Student Compliance stated that they were unable to comment when contacted regarding this article. LCC’s Public Relations office stated, “Final Grade Appeals are handled in complete adherence with pertinent College policy.” The office also provided a link for the final grade dispute procedure at LCC.

According to the final grade dispute procedure, Parling cannot submit a dispute for her final exam grade, as appealing a single assignment or exam grade does not qualify. She would have to make a case for her final grade in the course and go through the proper procedure for a change to be made. However, her ongoing OCR case may open the door for more conversations about LCC’s nursing program, especially for students utilizing accommodations.

As of right now, it is unclear how the case will progress. The next board meeting is tonight, where perhaps Parling will make a public comment once again.