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Alumni & Friends
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Alumni
Spotlight |
2006 Alumni Association Awards
The
Lewis-Clark State College Alumni
Association has announced its award
winners for 2006, including Lewiston
High School teacher Dennis Ohrtman.
Ohrtman, who also serves on the Lewiston
City Council, received the
Aletha Pabst
Award, which recognizes someone who
is not an alumnus but has made an
outstanding contribution to LCSC.
Paul Sinclair, a 1975 LCSC graduate,
received the
Educator
of the Year Award. He is a physical
education teacher at Sunset View
Elementary School in Kennewick, Wash.
Larry Heimgartner, who graduated from
LCSC in 1971, earned the
Alumni
of the Year Award. Heimgartner is
the theater and television program
director for Los Angeles Harbor College.
The winners were selected by the LCSC
Alumni Association Board of Directors
after an open nomination period.
Ohrtman helped start and organize the
LCSC Alumni Association. He taught at
LCSC from 1969-81 before taking a job at
Lewiston High School, where he now
teaches Spanish and journalism.
Ohrtman was born in Iowa and graduated
from Augustana College. He earned his
master’s at the University of South
Dakota and a Ph.D. from the University
of Idaho. He moved to Lewiston in 1969.
He remains active in the Lewiston
Orchards Kiwanis.
Sinclair demonstrates his commitment to
teaching by showing his students why
health and physical fitness are life
skills. His philosophy is to teach to
the cognitive level of the grade, make
sure the kids have fun and keep them all
moving and participating. No children
wait for their turn to play.
His active life philosophy is evident in
non-class activities as well. During the
spring, Sinclair put together a series
of fun runs where all the elementary
schools in the district are invited to
send children. PTO volunteers help
manage the event and all participants
get ribbons. He has developed a Mileage
Club where any children who want to come
out at lunch to run or walk earn mileage
tokens. At the end of the year, the
class with the most miles (tokens) wins
a pizza party paid for by the PTO. He
also encourages parents to get involved
and join their children at lunch to
run/walk with the Mileage Club.
Sinclair serves as a member of the
school district’s instruction council,
the district benefits committee and was
a member of the committee that proposed
to the district to remove pop machines
from the schools. He also serves on the
Washington Alliance for Health, PE,
Recreation and Dance.
Heimgartner is one of the most
accomplished citizens of the Los Angeles
southland area as evidenced by his award
from Rotary International as Citizen of
the Year in 2003. This honor was
bestowed upon him for his work as the
author and director of “Responsibility,”
a moving musical play about the lives of
children who live in a dump in Tijuana,
Mexico. The play created a drive for one
of the largest fundraisers by Rotary
International. This is only one of
several plays he has written with equal
social significance and impact.
Heimgartner is also the force that
drives the success of HCTV, a fully
operational television studio that
broadcasts to more than 50,000 homes in
the college’s service area via cable TV.
His success with children’s plays and
musicals is being transformed into
animation productions that have captured
the imagination of thousands of local
children with entertainment that
educates along the lines of ethical
behavior and social responsibility.
In the late 1960s, Heimgartner was named
the LCSC Outstanding Student of the Year
and was elected LCSC’s Student Body
President.
For more information on the awards or
the LCSC Alumni Association, contact
Renee Olsen, Director of Alumni &
Community Relations, at 792-2151 or at
rmolsen@lcsc.edu |
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