Catholic educator to receive lifetime achievement award

Friday, Sep. 26, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY — Kristin Fink, a Utah State University educator, will receive the Character Education Partnership National 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award in October in Washington, D.C. 

“No one has done more to advance the cause of character education in schools than Kristie Fink,” said CEP Board Chairman, Dr. Charles Haynes in a press release. “Widely admired for her dedication, leadership and caring heart, she embodies the ideals of Sanford N. McDonnell, for whom this award is named. Fink was one of the early pioneers in the field to realize that quality character education was a school/community-wide process and drew from the work and research of experts [in the field] to provide the best resources and training for the schools she was working with.”

Character education involves a child’s academic, social, emotional and spiritual skills that will help the student become successful in life, said Fink, a member of St. Martin de Porres Parish in Taylorsville.

Dr. Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro of Fordham University, who co-nominated Fink for the award, described her as “an influential advocate of quality character education; a tireless and effective contributor to both practice and policy, and a mentor to thousands who have become character education teachers, leaders, researchers and policymakers.”

Fink has been a leader of America’s character education movement for more than two decades, said Linda McKay, of the United States Department of Education. “Kristie came from the classroom to become the state coordinator; she set the framework and the criteria for the first national federal grants in character education; she was a role model. Many times as a state coordinator, she also was training and working with teachers in the classroom and at the same time teaching.” 

Fink was an influential national advocate in many ways, said McKay.

From 2001 to 2004, Fink served as executive director of Community of Caring in Washington, D.C. She has been a longtime advocate for policy changes that support whole child education, McKay said. To help principals and classroom teachers develop strategies that improve school culture and student character, Fink has led professional development workshops at schools in more than 30 states and in Canada; she also has been a participant in several White House conferences on character and community, said McKay. 

Fink, a graduate of Granite High School, was a secondary English language arts specialist in the Granite School District from 1973 to 1995. 

Fink always wanted to be a teacher, and mirrored her career goals after her fifth-grade teacher, she said. “She used to let me play school at her desk after school; I was practicing to be a teacher, she was who I wanted to become,” Fink said. “To me that is what CEP is about: giving students a sense of who they could be. I want my students to understand what their unique gifts are to help them figure out what their contributions can be.” 

Fink received a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education from the University of Utah. 

“When I did my master’s thesis in the 1970s, I started this kind of work — I just didn’t have the character words yet; what develops literacy and self-concept, but I was going toward the whole-child education … in all dimensions of human development,” she said. “As a teacher, I was struck by how important the curriculum that we choose for children is because it should carry the best of civilization.”

In 1995, Fink became the first full-time character education specialist in the country in a state department of education at the Utah State Office of Education, she said. She is currently a lecturer and teacher licensure coordinator at the Utah State University Salt Lake City Center.