CLARE
LEMKE AWARDED MONTANA BPW WOMAN OF ACHIEVEMENT
The Montana Business & Professional Women held their state convention in
Bozeman, Montana on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at the Comfort Inn. One of
the highlights of our annual state convention is awarding the statewide
Woman of Achievement. We have been recognizing outstanding women for many
years throughout the years of BPW, because women have been
under-recognized for their abilities and accomplishments in the working
world and, only now, after years of advocacy, are we seeing women reaching
the pinnacles of equality and consideration for their knowledge and
capabilities.
We had some wonderful applications for the Woman of Achievement Award this
year and, because of the talents and contributions of the candidates, we
decided that two of the candidates are so exceptional that we would
recognize both of them. We awarded a Certificate of Commendation to the
runner-up to Sally Broughton of Bozeman, and a plaque to the Woman of
Achievement, Clare Lemke of Livingston.
Clare Lemke is a registered nurse and is currently
the statewide coordinator of the Montana Tobacco Free Medical Campus
Project for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services,
responsible for creating tobacco free environments in hospitals and
medical facilities and has helped 18 hospitals in Montana transition to a
tobacco free campus, and is working with 10 additional facilities. In the
process, she created specialized materials for various types of medical
facilities including acute care hospitals, outpatient clinics, and mental
health facilities. With funding of grants that she wrote, she organized a
Women’s Wellness Fair, a year-long Women’s Wellness Project and a breast
cancer support group. Programs targeting young girls were another focus
including Go Girls Go!, Parent/Daughter workshops, Girls Fit’n Fun Club
and other fitness and education programs. She also created a Bumps and
Bandaids program for child care providers and Babysitting Basics for
preteens.
Through her educational efforts, most businesses in her community embraced
smoke free worksites before the passage of the Montana Clean Indoor Air
Act. Her efforts have brought a spirit of cooperation throughout the
community and has helped to create smoke free workplaces, tobacco free
play areas in parks, tobacco free baseball fields and school campuses plus
tobacco free hospitals resulting in healthy work and play environments
which have eliminated secondhand smoking health hazards.
In addition, Clare has been active in Boy Scouting and youth soccer,
assisting with the development of a Sister City Japanese Garden, creating
and maintaining a 175 tree shelter belt and irrigation system at the
animal shelter property, and planning and developing a 19-acre city park
with full-sized soccer fields, open green space, walking paths,
concessions, restrooms, picnic tables and parking areas. As a concerned
citizen, she helped develop a plan to clean up diesel contamination at the
rail yard and contributed four years to this important work.
She is also an accomplished quilter, learning how to run machines to quilt
friend’s quilts so they could have finished products. She encouraged
donating quilts to women with breast cancer, to a family that lost their
home in a fire, to women living in a group home for the disabled in China,
and is currently in an ongoing project to create quilts for children in an
orphanage in Nigeria. She graduated from Cornell University cum laude with
a B.S. degree in nursing and has been a speaker at numerous state and
national conferences about health, wellness, and tobacco issues. She has
been recognized by the American Cancer Society, the World Health
Organization, the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program and others for
outstanding leadership and achievement in preventing youth tobacco use.
Sally Broughton is equally exceptional. She is a
teacher at Monforton School who has made a significant impact on her
community and school. She has been recognized for outstanding qualities in
teaching her seventh grade students in Social Studies and Civics,
developing an innovative Project Citizen curriculum. She currently teaches
Social Studies and Civics and is the Student Council Advisor and Peer
Mediation leader. She chairs the Social Studies Curriculum Committee, is
the MEA-MFT representative, and is the lead teacher for Montana Indian
Education. The variety of her student’s accomplishments is impressive:
accomplishing implementation of a safe path to school which included
students counting traffic, surveying vehicle drivers and students,
developing alternatives, raising funds for the project including getting a
donation of asphalt to cover the path, testifying before local county
commissioners, who passed a policy directing the road department to
construct the path. Through the process, the students developed skills in
math, public speaking, research, writing, interviewing, technology,
working together, and art.
Other accomplishments include a bike helmet policy, a community playground
built with the help of the students, public support for a much-needed new
jail, restrooms in the downtown area, early warning and safety measures at
a nearby dam, a competitive track program and mandatory community service
as part of the k-8 curriculum. In 2008, the National Learn and Serve
Corporation selected her class to receive the Spirit of Service Award for
“Operation Save the Playground”, winning this honor over 1000 Learn and
Serve programs in the United States.
In addition to her classroom responsibilities, Sally has been a state
coordinator for the Center for Civic Education’s “We the People Program”
resulting in more schools in Montana using these award winning programs.
She serves on professional committees and associations which have helped
Montana teachers do their jobs better. She has been an award winning
social studies teacher for the last 20 years. Her honors include receiving
the national American Civics Education Teacher Award from the Center on
Congress, National Conference of State Legislatures and Center for Civic
Education. As mentioned above, she and her class received the National
Learn and Serve Corporation’s Spirit of Service award. She is one of three
teachers selected for the 2008 American Civics Educator Award memorialized
in the July 14, 2008 Senate Congressional Record. And, this year, she has
been recognized as the 2009 Montana Teacher of the Year. On Tuesday, April
28th, 2009, she received the Montana Teacher of the Year award from
President Barack Obama in Washington DC.
