Paris, Tenn.–Tennessee College of Applied Technology –Paris Practical Nursing graduate Ryan Cross has been named 2020 TCAT Student of the Year.
She was named the statewide winner of the second annual Statewide Outstanding Achievement Recognition (SOAR) Awards at the Tennessee Board of Regents quarterly meeting Tuesday.
She began this competition late last year as the local campus winner and advanced through the state competition to earn the statewide title. She is now a nurse at Vanderbilt Medical Center.
Cross, the daughter of Christi Cross of Paris, is a native Henry Countian who moved to Nashville upon her TCAT graduation to accept the position with Vanderbilt as a Practical Nurse. She graduated in December 2019 with a diploma as a Practical Nurse and plans to work as a licensed practical nurse while pursuing her RN degree.
In addition to Cross, the College System of Tennessee honored five other outstanding students, faculty and staff members and two colleges of the year in its second annual Statewide Outstanding Achievement Recognition (SOAR) Awards during the Tennessee Board of Regents quarterly meeting Tuesday.
The six individual SOAR Award winners represent Motlow State and Nashville State community colleges, and Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology (TCATs) at Elizabethton, Knoxville and Paris.
The individual 2020 SOAR Award winners:
- Student of the Year, Community College: Dominic Marcoaldi, a Nashville State Community College student expected to earn an Associate of Arts degree in English this summer. He plans to continue in a teacher training program to become an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, and later hopes to pursue a degree in philosophy. He is one of many students who returned to college through the Tennessee Reconnect program, which provides community college free of tuition for adults without degrees.
- Student of the Year, TCAT: Ryan Olivia Cross, a December graduate of the Licensed Practical Nursing program at TCAT Paris who is now a nurse at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, in Nashville. She plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in nursing for a career serving as a pediatric nurse.
- Faculty Member of the Year, Community College: Kathleen McAdams, Assistant Professor of Biology at Nashville State. McAdams chose to work at a community college because they serve all students and said she appreciates the daily opportunity to influence the lives of both traditional and non-traditional students in an environment that is affordable and offers one-on-one attention. “Ultimately, by teaching at a community college, I am given the feeling that I am changing the world in a small way, one student at a time, every single day,” she said.
- Faculty Member of the Year, TCAT: Mike Sledzinski, Senior Instructor in Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration at TCAT Knoxville. Before earning his bachelor’s degree, he graduated from TCAT Knoxville, an experience that he said benefits his students. “I love the challenge of transforming a student who has been academically marginalized their whole life. I show them that I am also a stakeholder in their success and I will not leave them behind,” he said.
- Staff Member of the Year, Community College: Sharon Edwards, Branch Librarian at Motlow State Community College. Edwards said she loves finding information for students, faculty and others, helping them learn to find it themselves, instructing users with technical or digital issues, and creating innovating programs in which library patrons participate. She has also discovered the joy of helping students change their lives in a few semesters and watching them graduate. “Libraries are vibrant community places where collaboration is encouraged, makerspaces buzz with technical activity, digital literacy is taught at all user levels, and democracy itself lives in the free and open access of information, spaces, and services,” she said.
- Staff Member of the Year, TCAT: John Lee, Industry Training Coordinator at TCAT Elizabethton. “Coming from a family of educators,” Lee said, “there is no greater reward than seeing a student succeed and create a better life for themselves. This is why I entered education and why I am proud to be a part of the College System…to see the student light up when they begin to learn new things and to see how what they are learning will make them successful in society.”
The Tennessee Board of Regents, which governs the 13 public community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology comprising the College System of Tennessee, established the SOAR Awards program last year to recognize and honor the outstanding students, faculty and staff members at its colleges, as well as the major accomplishments of the colleges.