Empowering adults with the literacy skills to thrive as workers, family members, and citizens.

Ruth has been involved with ABE, mostly working at St. Paul Public Schools, for nearly 35 years. During this time, she has recruited, trained and placed more than 1,350 volunteers (according to Hubbs’ SID database), who have contributed a whopping 151,379 hours to the program. This equates to more than 72 people working full-time for a year – or one person working full-time for 72 years! Most importantly, Ruth’s work has resulted in tens of thousands of students receiving extra instruction, attention and support.

While Ruth has served two main roles at Hubbs Center – Volunteer Coordinator and Student Advisor – she has never limited her work to these job titles. Rather, Ruth has always been ready to serve learners and the ABE field in whatever way needed. Whether organizing a job fair, coordinating the Hubbs Scholarship Fund, assisting with new student orientation, creating a student newsletter, piloting a new SID report for SPARC, mentoring a work study student, or discussing statewide volunteer issues with LAN, Ruth is ready to do the work. She is efficient, humble, and sometimes wickedly funny. She is always ready and willing to serve learners, and she is the first to draw attention to the successes of others. Ruth has successfully nominated countless volunteers for statewide recognition in the form of service hour awards and Outstanding Volunteer awards through the years, and has always shown up, usually outside of her normal work hours, to honor Hubbs’ volunteer award winners at recognition events.

Ruth is fluent in Spanish and is a certified Spanish-English interpreter, and these skills are a huge asset to the entire school. Sometimes Spanish-speaking students will walk up to the front desk and just say: “Ruth.” They know that she will not only ensure that whatever they need is communicated accurately and completely to other staff or partners, but also that they will be fully heard and understood, which of course is also a testament to Ruth’s caring and patient personality.