From student to staff to honoree, Mary Stricker is this year's 2009 Distinguished Alumni at Southwestern Oregon Community College.

The award goes to an alumnus who has achieved excellence in their professional and personal lives and for touching the lives of others with their contributions, a press release said.

Stricker was a student at Southwestern from 1984-86. She went on to get a bachelor's degree at the University of Oregon and masters degree from the Univer-sity of Washington. She was first employed by Southwestern in July of 1990, serving as a librarian and later as director of the library. She retired in November 2003.



Stricker was an outstanding student, and when she returned to serve Southwestern as an employee, she continued her incredible work ethic, dedication to her job, and passion for quality education and library services, the press release said.

"Being a student at Southwestern before I came back to work as a librarian gave me valuable insight," said Stricker. "As a librarian and an advisor, I was able to be more helpful and understanding of the students with which I dealt."

Stricker still has a role at Southwestern from her new residence in Texas. She serves as an online tutor for the Writing Center. She has held the position since online tutoring started in 2005. Despite the distance, she enjoys tutoring and mentoring the students and this role provides her a way to still contribute back to the institution.Ê

"Southwestern gave me confidence to continue my education which ultimately changed my life," Stricker said.

"My self-confidence was near zero when I first came to Southwestern to take classes. I worked hard, and then began to think I had the stuff to succeed after I made a 4.0 GPA my first year. My AA degree from Southwestern was the solid foundation I built on."