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Marie Hughes Elementary librarian named winner of inaugural Laura Rasmussen Award
Librarian Tamara Judge, center, talks with David Parmenter, a supplemental educational services teacher, after Judge was awarded the inaugural Tamara Judge Laura Rasmussen Love of Reading Award at Marie Hughes Elementary School in Northwest Albuquerque on Tuesday. At right is Jessica Trumble, Community Relations Manager for Dion’s.
The late Laura Rasmussen, ever upbeat, constantly made positive impacts on people in her short 32 years, among them with her work for the Triple-A baseball Albuquerque Isotopes and at Dion’s Pizza.
Club Read, which turns 20 years old in 2023, is a partnership between Dion’s and the Isotopes to encourage kids to keep reading, particularly in the summer between school years.
So it’s appropriate that when the two entities honored Tamara Judge, librarian at Marie Hughes Elementary, for spearheading a successful Club Read school-wide effort this year, Judge received the inaugural Laura Rasmussen Love of Reading Award.
Rasmussen graduated from Cibola High School and the University of New Mexico. She worked in sports information roles with the Isotopes and UNM before eventually taking a job with the Big 12 Conference. She later worked as a marketing representative at Dion’s. She died of heart problems in May 2021.
Behind Judge’s leadership, Marie Hughes Elementary, 5701 Mojave St NW, had the highest scores of any participating school. And overall, more than 40,000 books were read and reported by nearly 6,000 students from 200 schools around the community.
