Recently RWC held its Distinguished Awards Ceremony to honor the considerable achievements of distinguished alumni and the excellence of RWC faculty and staff members. The recipients of the awards this year were Kathy Schmadel (Staff Distinguished Service Award), Ross Wright, Esq. (Distinguished Teaching Award), Michael Carr (Distinguished Alumni Award), and Rebecca Lee, PhD, RN (Distinguished Alumni Award). Kathy Schmadel is Senior Admissions Officer for RWC’s Intake Services. She also works with incoming and pending Dental Hygiene and Nursing students, as an advisor. As RWC Interim Dean Don O’Meara noted in his remarks at the ceremony, Kathy is known to have great problem solving skills and an ability to develop new processes, to make the system better serve students. He also said she has a great ability to show just the right amount of nurturing and tough love to students. Countless students praise Kathy for helping them get through their programs, and many say that without her they may not have made it through.
Ross Wright, Esq. is a part-time RWC faculty member who teaches Business Law, and, according to Dean O’Meara, in the past 11 years, he has touched many lives helping students get through their first law course. When teaching, Professor Wright brings law to life by sharing his experience as an assistant prosecutor and working for years at one of the top law firms as well as counsel for General Electric Corporation. With all of his past experience, Professor Wright is looked upon as a role model by many of his students and a valued member of the Business and Economics Department. He is great at engaging students with his energetic style of teaching accompanied by his ability to make the law understandable and to draw students into his classes.
Michael Carr is a well rounded alumni member. Aside from his professional life, Carr donates his time as a professional musician to help raise money for numerous charities. He also participates in many community clean up efforts, supports the local fire and rescue squads, and is a husband and father to two daughters. Carr puts the same effort in his professional life as Vice President and CIO at National Rural Utilities Corporative Finance Corporation. He has steadily moved up the corporate ladder, starting as just a programmer for the company.
Rebecca Lee, PhD, RN began as a student in RWC’s Nursing program. She was very self-motivated while attending RWC and displayed a high level of performance in her interactions with faculty and classmates. Lee also exhibited leadership skills that set her apart from many other students. Since graduating in 2001, she has continued to make many accomplishments, such as her internship with The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, her work as a member of a multidisciplinary research team at Children’s Hospital, where she received the graduate Student Merit Award, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Nursing Research from UC. Lee is an extraordinary role model; she is one of those rare people who can grapple with hard data in order to find solutions, Dean O’Meara said.