Education 4 August 2015

Great Oaks officials earn statewide recognition

By
-

Great Oaks Career Campuses Board Chair Ron Friend and Great Oaks Vice President  Jon Quatman were given statewide honors recently by the Ohio Association for  Career and Technical Education (Ohio ACTE).

Ron Friend, who also serves on the Fairfield Local Schools Board of Education, was named a 2015 Outstanding School Board Member.

As chair of the 35-member Great Oaks Board of Directors, sets a high standard as a career-technical school board member.

He developed his business acumen by owning and operating a small business (a 250-acre farm), supervising a sales force and setting up and managing retail sales operations. He earned respect in the community by establishing a non-profit organization that built 36 low-income housing units, leading a committee to encourage local conservation and agricultural exploration, and serving as treasurer for a 26-church and community organization. He has proven himself a strong advocate for education as a member of the Fairfield Board of Education since 1992. On the Great Oaks Board he has chaired three of the five board committees and been a member of the Treasurer and Superintendent search committees. Of all the commendations Ron has earned, one of his proudest is his election as Ohio's Future Farmers of America President in 1968.

Jon Quatman, of Mason, was presented with the 2015 Ambassador Award. He has served as the voice of career-technical education with Great Oaks' 36 affiliated school districts, Chambers of Commerce, Advance-Ed North Central Association, iSPACE, High Schools That Work and Partners for a Competitive Workforce.

He was instrumental in revamping the iSPACE structure to reach more elementary students with STEM education. He stepped in when needed to serve as president of Ohio ACTE. He has played a major role in strengthening the importance of High Schools That Work in regional school reform efforts. Jon has led many teams through the accreditation process for North Central and Advance Ed. For his commitment to high educational standards, he earned the Ohio Excellence in Education Award from North Central, and the Ohio's Individual Excellence in Education from Advance Ed. At Great Oaks, he works to spread the message that career-technical education is an opportunity for high quality academic and career preparation.



[[In-content Ad]]

Add new comment

This is not for publication.
This is not for publication.
About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
Article comments are not posted immediately to the Web site. Each submission must be approved by the Web site editor, who may edit content for appropriateness. There may be a delay of 24-48 hours for any submission while the web site editor reviews and approves it. Note: All information on this form is required. Your telephone number and email address is for our use only, and will not be attached to your comment.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.