Alumna Receives Prestigious Award for Teaching Excellence

RIC alumna Lisa Tvenstrup, a Ponaganset High School educator, was recently honored with the 2026 Teaching Excellence Award by the National Education Association Rhode Island (NEARI). This award is in recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and her unwavering advocacy for public education.

Tvenstrup graduated from Rhode Island College in 1985 with a degree in secondary education/social sciences. Since then, she has devoted her 40-year career to Ponaganset High School in Glocester, where she has taught a diverse array of history and social studies courses, including East Asian history, world cultures, psychology and genocide studies.

Tvenstrup emphasizes that each course she teaches is designed to impact students on a personal level. In her psychology course, students explore self-awareness; in sociology, they gain tools to navigate relationships; in world cultures and East Asian history she fosters global empathy, underscoring the idea that “we are more alike than different”; and in genocide studies, her students confront the haunting lesson of “never again,” learning that the intent behind genocide can be more devastating than war.

These courses, she says, “are designed to help students grow into more thoughtful, compassionate and informed individuals.”

Tvenstrup has also served on numerous school and district committees, acted as a class advisor and leadership team leader, and mentored aspiring teachers as a critic teacher at Rhode Island College. Her dedication also extends to union advocacy, where she has served in multiple local and state positions.

However, it is her volunteer work with the NEARI Children’s Fund, she says, that has been among the most meaningful experiences of her career. The NEARI Children’s Fund is a charitable organization that provides emergency assistance to public school students whose families are struggling to meet basic needs, which so often stands in the way of learning.

Tvenstrup organized student volunteers at Ponaganset High School to help with a holiday gift-giving program that matches sponsors with public school children in need. She and her students, along with other volunteers, traveled to the D’Abate Elementary School in Providence, where the vast majority of students come from low-income families, to distribute gifts to each student.

“I was able to connect my Ponaganset students with children in the neighborhood where I grew up,” she says. “The experience deepened their understanding of community and reinforced the idea that no matter where we live or what our circumstances, we are more alike than different.”

Tvenstrup will travel to Washington, D.C., in February 2026 to be recognized at the NEA Foundation’s Salute to Excellence in Education Gala, alongside educators from across the country.

Learn more about RIC’s B.A. in secondary education.