Celebrate Literacy Award Announced for 2003

Sharron L. McElmeel has been designated as the 2003 recipient of the Iowa Reading Council's Celebrate Literacy Award, given annually to a professional educator who goes beyond job role expectations to focus on reading and literacy in the community. McElmeel received the Cedar Rapids Area Reading Council's  Celebrate Literacy Award in April [2003] and was nominated by the council for her involvement with reading and literacy related activities that has spanned a career as a teacher and library media specialist in the Cedar Rapids Community Schools and continues in her role as a full-time writer, educational consultant, and college instructor. She has taught young adult literature at Mount Mercy College and is currently teaching children's literature at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls [now, in 2004, at the University of Wisconsin - Stout]. One of her most recent projects was a two-year focus on reading and literacy activities, Building a Community of Readers, that involved 100 community organizations and more than 20,000 community participants. She is currently volunteering in a multi-year project to document and research material to augment the Cedar Rapids Public Library's Evelyn Zerzanek Collection of Original Illustrations from Children's Books.

In 1988, McElmeel was honored as the Iowa Reading Association's Reading Teacher of the Year -- the only library media specialist to have been given that honor.  In 1998 she was named Linn County [Iowa] Teacher of the Year and nominated as Iowa's Teacher of the Year.