Sharon Pye teaches health care science at Southeast Bulloch High School. Pye recently was named the Georgia Health Care Science Technology Educators Association’s Health Care Science Educator of the Year during the organization’s summer conference in Atlanta.
    “Sharon Pye is an ideal health care science teacher,” said Phyllis Johnson, health care science program specialist for the Georgia Department of Education. “She is knowledgeable and up to date on the health care industry for her students, and she shares her talents, abilities, and ideas with new teachers all over Georgia.”
    Johnson, along with association president Phyllis Dumas and Sharon Norman, director of the National Area Health Education Center’s Blue Ridge office in Rome, also recognized Pye for achieving industry certification for Southeast Bulloch’s Health Care Science Program.
    Bulloch County’s Career Technical and Agricultural Education Director Abbie Lacienski secured and administered a grant for the school that allowed Pye and local health care industry volunteers who serve on Pye’s advisory committee to pursue certification.
    “Ms. Pye strives for excellence and provides countless opportunities for her students to participate in work-based learning placements, community service activities, and networking with health professionals,” Lacienski said.
    “We spent a year in self-study and then had an onsite evaluation of our program’s curriculum, student activities, teacher professional development and qualifications, and program facilities and equipment,” Pye said
    The onsite evaluation was conducted in April by local health care professionals: Derisa Hamilton, RN; Marilyn Turner, RN, MA; Jackie Howard, RN; Edward Rich, Home Health Equipment; Melanie Lavoi, RN; Toni Flatman, RN; and Rachel Kirkland, Magnolia Coastlands AHEC Health Educator.
    “As an instructor at OTC, I appreciate schools like SEBHS that support health science education and do what is necessary to provide relevant and meaningful instruction,” said Marilyn Turner, OTC Instructor and member of the local industry certification review team. “The high school health care science education program adequately prepares students for the transition to either technical college or university-level healthcare education.”
    During her tenure, Pye has helped strengthen relationships with local post-secondary institutions.
    Health care science is one of 11 Career Technical and Agricultural Education courses offered at Southeast Bulloch.
    “When I learned about the new health care science program at SEBHS in 2001, I wanted to work with young people and make them aware of their post-secondary options and encourage them to continue their education,” Pye said.
    She has been an educator for nine years, all at Southeast Bulloch.
    And her students are living proof she is making an impact.  Two of her very first students are now registered nurses and several others are pursuing health science careers such as nursing, physical therapy, radiology technology, dentistry, medicine and veterinary science.
    Southeast Bulloch’s 2010 Valedictorian Natasha Polite credits Pye for fueling her interest in health care science. 
    “Anatomy and health care science were my favorite courses, and having a former nurse of her caliber as an instructor was great,” said Polite. 
    Polite is majoring in biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech.
    Outside the classroom Pye advises the school’s Health Occupations Students of America chapter. She began the club five years ago, and it has grown to 62 members, one of whom served on the state officer team for two years. The chapter has been active in the community recently sponsoring a talent show that raised $1,700 for cystic fibrosis research.
    Pye received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Georgia Southern University and her certification to teach health occupations from Valdosta State. She worked primarily as a critical care nurse for seven years at four different area hospitals, including Bulloch Memorial, now known as East Georgia Regional.
    She began fostering an interest in teaching while at University Hospital in Augusta, where she served as a preceptor for new nurses. She later taught practical nursing for five years at Southeastern Technical College and three years at Ogeechee Tech.