WARWICK – Four Community College of Rhode Island faculty members have received the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development Excellence Awards during the group’s recent International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence.
The honorees are English professor Kathleen Beauchene, nursing assistant professor Mary Costa, computer studies assistant professor Michael Kelly and library assistant professor Melanie Soter.
The National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development promotes and celebrates excellence in teaching, learning and leadership at community and technical colleges. The awards were established in 1991 to recognize individuals doing extraordinary work in their fields.
“The college has an outstanding cadre of faculty who transform our students’ lives daily,” said Rosemary Costigan, CCRI vice president of academic affairs. “We are proud they are being recognized for their commitment and dedication to teaching excellence.”
Beauchene is the program director of the associate degree in Communication and Film/Media Arts and New Media Communication certificate programs, which she helped develop along with new communication and film courses.
She chairs the Communication Committee, is a member and juror of the CCRI Film Festival Committee and is a new faculty and distance-learning mentor.
Costa led the establishment of the new nursing curriculum at CCRI. She teaches in both the classroom and clinical settings for the advanced medical-surgical course. Her professional experience has been centered on caring for critically ill adults in various settings and she is a staff nurse on the Women’s Progressive Care Unit at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence. She has earned CCRN certification by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses.
Kelly has an extensive background in computer studies and information technology-related areas. Under his leadership for the past nine years, the computer studies department has grown and gained the reputation as a national leader in cybersecurity education.
Soter has been a librarian at CCRI since 2013. Conducting library instruction sessions for a wide range of courses, she is dedicated to helping students build their information literacy skills to find, evaluate and apply information in the classroom and beyond.
