PORTSMOUTH – Southern Ohio’s higher education promoter, the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education (OACHE), won prestigious national recognition this week.

Tuesday, May 08, 2001

PORTSMOUTH – Southern Ohio’s higher education promoter, the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education (OACHE), won prestigious national recognition this week.

The program became the state winner of the annual Public Service Excellence Award sponsored by the Public Employees Roundtable in Washington, D.C.

A group of 30 management and professional organizations representing more than one million public employees, the Roundtable recognizes efforts across the country that highlight the quality of government workers and programs.

OACHE – a partnership of higher education institutions and K-12 schools in Ohio’s 29 Appalachian counties – was recognized for increasing the educational attainment of the region’s citizens.

An evaluator has found that the college-going rate has increased in 77 percent of the projects, with an average increase of 16 percent, Roundtable officials said.

OACHE’s Ohio model is also being replicated in West Virginia and serves as the model for a new Appalachian Regional Commission program, they said in describing the reasons for the award.

"We are very pleased," said Wayne White, OACHE’s director in Portsmouth, and a former superintendent in Lawrence County.

"We’re excited that educators throughout the Appalachian part of Ohio and West Virginia are recognized for their efforts to make things better for younger people," White said, lauding teachers’ and OACHE staff’s efforts that led to the award.

"It’s evident that students in the Appalachia region can be motivated to see that college can be for them," he said.

OACHE officials traveled on Sunday to Washington. They were honored at a "Breakfast of Champions" on Monday.

Some of the other seven public service programs honored by the Roundtable included a jail work program in the Minneapolis metro area, a graffiti abatement/youth employment program in Long Beach, Calif., and a U.S. Air Force military base medical unit in England.