News
June 1, 2017The College of Saint Rose Confers its Highest Honor on Sister Charleen Bloom
Sister Charleen Bloom, a longtime member of the board of directors at St. Catherine’s Center for Children, has been awarded The College of Saint Rose’s prestigious Carondelet Medal, the college’s highest honor.
Nothing pleases us more than to see someone honored for a lifetime of achievement, especially when that someone is a special friend of St. Catherine’s Center for Children. That’s why we are happy and proud to pass on the news that The College of Saint Rose has conferred its highest honor, The Carondelet Medal, on Sister Charleen Bloom.
Sister Char, as she is affectionately known to friends and associates, served on the Saint Rose faculty for four decades. She was also a longtime member of the board of directors at St. Catherine’s Center for Children.
Sister Char has an impressive list of accomplishments and honors, but perhaps none greater than this: as an expert in communications disorders, she established, and for 20 years led, the five-year Saint Rose program in communications sciences and disorders. She helped steer the program to national accreditation with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Her workshops on stuttering have served as a national model. Sister Char is the proverbial stone tossed upon the water: her work has rippled out and improved the lives of countless people as her students graduated and became speech and language pathologists and audiologists.
“Sister Char is a combination of gentle and strong,” noted Saint Rose Professor David Debonis, an audiologist and former student of Sister Char’s. From her work on behalf of children and families at St. Catherine’s, we know this to be true. She possesses a gentle soul and a determined spirit.
Sister Char has been many things in her remarkable life: professor, educational innovator, author and speaker. But we have a hunch she would most like to be remembered as a friend, especially to those who need one. Congratulations, Sister Char!
