Judy Fiumano, Matt Kline and Kelly Ramos-Arango have been named inaugural recipients of the Catherine Simonson Educational Advancement Scholarship Awards, a prize established by the Howard Center in Burlington to help its employees reach educational goals so they can continue their careers in social services and related professions.
Fiumano, of Killington, works at Howard Center’s Park Street Program in Rutland, where she provides nursing support. She’ll use the award to further her graduate studies at Wilkes University to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner.
Ramos-Arango plans to use the award to help pay for a graduate degree in clinical mental health counseling from Vermont State University. A 2015 graduate of the University of Vermont, Ramos-Arango works at Howard Center’s T-House residential program and aspires to a full-time counseling position.
Kline, like Ramos-Arango, is pursuing a graduate degree at Vermont State with the goal of becoming a clinical mental health counselor. He has worked at Howard Center for nearly six years, with most of that time spent helping students in local K-12 schools through the agency's inclusion program.
Catherine Simonson, for whom the award is named, was Howard Center’s chief client services officer until her retirement in 2022. She offered her congratulations to the inaugural awardees and shared, “For me it’s all about the need to create pathways so people can stay in the agency. We can’t do the work without the people.”