Le Mars educator to receive Excellence in Education Award

Sept. 20, 2007

A longtime Catholic school educator from Le Mars will be the recipient of this year's Bishop's Excellence in Education Administrator Award.

Lorie Nussbaum, elementary principal at Gehlen Catholic School, will receive the award at this year's Bishop's Dinner for Catholic Education that will be held on Oct. 21 at the Sioux City Convention Center.

According to Kevin Vickery, superintendent of Catholic schools in the diocese, Nussbaum is being recognized because she has shown an extraordinary commitment in the promotion of Catholic schools.

Nussbaum said she opted to work in Catholic schools for selfish reasons because she wanted to "develop my own personal faith life and secondly to be able to serve others through education - to have the opportunity to work in a faith filled environment where God can be obviously the most important focus no matter what we are doing."

A native of Le Mars, Nussbaum attended Gehlen Catholic Grade School before attending junior and senior high at Le Mars Community. She earned a bachelor's degree at Westmar College in Le Mars and later earned her master's in elementary and secondary administration at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

She taught junior and senior high students for 19 years at Gehlen on the subjects of family and consumer science as well as health. Since 1997, she has served as the elementary principal at Gehlen.

Teaching in a Catholic school has been important to her because it has helped "me to remember to focus on prayer and reflecting on my purpose to others and to better understand what God is calling me to do. It keeps me grounded in staying focused on what is important in my life."

Nussbaum credited her parents, Kenneth and Doris Rolfes, in providing an upbringing focused on faith formation. She also recognized the priests, sisters and lay people who taught her when she was a student at Gehlen.

She said she found inspiration in people who approach life with a positive attitude and who are peacemakers - Christ Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The educator is also continually inspired by classroom teachers and students whom she has worked with as a peer and mentor as they model to each other the tenants of a peacemaker.

"I have been blessed to have been placed by God in this school," she said. "So much of my life is influenced by others who live by their example in order that I might serve others with joy in my heart."

Nussbaum and her husband, Gene, have two children: Scott, a 2001 graduate of Gehlen, who served in the Army in Iraq in 2005; and Jennifer, a 2007 Gehlen graduate, who is a student at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids. They are members of St. James Parish in Le Mars.

This is the third year for the administrator's award. The first two recipients were Gene Meister of Bishop Garrigan School in Algona and Ron Olberding of Sacred Heart School in Spencer.

Tickets are presently on sale for the Bishop's Dinner. For more information call (712) 255-7933.