Tina Nabinger, teacher librarian at Minoa Elementary School in Minoa, NY, has been honored with a ‘Women Who Make America’ award by WCNY-TV, Syracuse’s PBS affiliate.
In their sixth year, the awards recognized 10 women in a ceremony held at the Wesleyan Chapel of the Women’s Rights Historical Park in Seneca Falls earlier this month. Nabinger is a 1993 graduate of the MS in Library and Information Science program at the School of Information Studies (iSchool).
The awards were first started in collaboration with the PBS documentary “Makers: Women Who Make America.” Since then, the TV station has continued the Makers Awards as a way to celebrate the achievements of Central New York women and inspire others to follow their examples. The awards are sponsored by the Lockheed Martin Employees’ Federated Fund with support from the National Park Service.
“WCNY is proud to showcase the contributions of women who are making Central New York a better place to live and work,” said Debbie Stack, WCNY’s senior director for education and community engagement. “And it is especially moving to honor these outstanding women in the very location where the nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention was held in 1848.”
Nabinger has served as an elementary school librarian for 24 years, working in both the Chittenango and East Syracuse-Minoa school districts.
She was nominated for the award by her husband, iSchool LIS program graduate Steven Nabinger G’95. Stephen works as a high school librarian in the Tully School District.
In the nomination materials, Steven wrote, “as a librarian, Tina has been a passionate advocate for putting excellent books in the hands of every student. She has also been an outspoken advocate for media and technology literacy, working hard to expose her students to the cutting edge equipment, programs, and apps they will need to succeed in school and life. Further, she started one of the first maker programs in Onondaga County when she began teaching her Book Cooks classes after school nine years ago. Every week Tina meets with enthusiastic students and pairs excellent reading materials with innovative recipes for them to try. She has invited guest chefs in to cook with the kids and taken the students on field trips to see how real restaurants are run. For Tina, the world is her classroom. For her students, the sky is the limit.”