This year, the Belleville West Library underwent a leadership change. After 6 years, Mrs. Droege has passed the torch to Dr. Ursani in order to start new endeavors at the CAVE.
The addition of District 201’s Center for Academic and Vocational Excellence opened up an opportunity for Droege and Ursani to pursue new challenges.
“I recently earned my Special Ed certificate so I wanted to do something with that,” said English and Individualized Education teacher Mrs. Tiffany Droege, “I wanted to be at a smaller school and work with a smaller group of students, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to do that.”
This has also opened an opportunity for Head Librarian Dr. Soune Ursani to make a welcome career change as well.
“A lot of it was just going through my Doctoral program and realizing that the English classroom didn’t allow me to do as much as I think the library does,” Ursani said when asked what prompted the change, “so I’m just looking forward to working with more students and staff, I’m really excited for that.”
In order to make these transitions, both Droege and Ursani had to get education for their new roles.
“So [library degree] is 18 credit hours and a test,” said Ursani, “I did that, but I think I’ll go back through U of I and finish the whole Master’s, because I enjoyed the classes so much I’d like to keep learning.”
For Droege, this is actually going back to something she’s done before, but with a new qualification.
“[Special Ed certification] was really the only thing I had to get to make this transition,” Droege said, “This is my 18th year in education, prior to being a librarian I taught English for 10 years at Collinsville. I have an English teaching certification and then I also have my library certification, and my most recent was Special Ed. I find that I’m using all of those here at the CAVE.”
Both Droege and Ursani are looking forward to some new opportunities this year will present them with.
“We’re going to host a family reading night in March, so we’re looking at different programming we can do,” Ursani said when asked what she was most excited for, “and growing Project Lit a little bit because we’re taking our students this year to SIUE with the East Chapter of Project Lit.”
Droege is also looking forward to what this year has to offer.
“I think what i’m most excited for about being back in the classroom is to get to know the students a little bit better,” she said, “In the library I had a good, close relationship with our student workers, but for the most part I’m just seeing kids on the fly, but being in the classroom I get these kids for an hour every single day, so I’m getting to know them a little better, which has been fun.”
This is just one of many changes West has seen this year.
