BC Foundation Faculty & Staff Excellence Awards (Formerly MOE)

Sara Gardner, Autism Spectrum Navigators

Sara began at Bellevue College in 2010 during the pilot study for what is now the Autism Spectrum Navigators (ASN) program. Following the pilot, Sara stayed on to design and develop ASN, and now serves as its program director. Sara is an adjunct faculty member, and teaches orientation and the first class in the ASN course series to incoming program students. She also provides curriculum design and guidance for the ASN course series. Sara holds professional certification as a Collaborative Problem Solving trainer from Think:Kids, a program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Suzanne Lane, Diagnostic Ultrasound Technology & Nuclear Medicine Technology

Suzanne has been an employee with Bellevue College for the past 12 years. She currently serves as the program manager for the Diagnostic Ultrasound Technology and Nuclear Medicine Technology programs. Before that, for eight years she was a program manager with Worker Retraining, ans spent two years as a program coordinator in Continuing Education working with the Fast Track and Real Estate programs. She earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and human development from the University of Nebraska, and has worked in child care, early childhood education and as an administrative staff for a variety of businesses. She considers Bellevue College to be her best professional experience ever, and the highlights of her day are guiding BC’s talented students while working closely with the fabulous faculty and staff. Suzanne also enjoys spending time reading, volunteering for various organizations and her most recent passion is attending theatrical productions.

Charles Calvert, iBIT – Information Systems

Charles has been working with computers and writing code in one form or another for about 25 years. He started out with Turbo Pascal and Delphi, spent time with Java, C++, Python and Perl, and then spent a number of years working in C#. Charles spent most of his career in industry, working first for Borland, then for a start up in Silicon Valley, and until a few years ago he was at Microsoft on the C# team. Charles earned a degree in journalism and computer science from the Evergreen State College. The author of 10 technical books which have sold well over 100,000 copies, Charles currently lives in the Seattle area where he enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, sailing, and skiing.

Katherine Oleson, Communication Studies

Katherine has been teaching at BC since 2005. She attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in communication studies and Scandinavian studies. She moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington for her master’s degree in communication. She primarily teaches Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication and Survey of Speech Communication. She currently serves as the chair for the Communication Studies Department, and is also the faculty advisor for BC’s local chapter of Phi Theta Kappa. She and her husband live in Des Moines. She loves seeing the Northwest waterwaysand mountains every day, as she grew up on a farm in the Midwest and there are no mountains to speak of there. She has two golden retrievers, Cosmo and Seven, who are both named after Seinfeld references.