Perpich News

Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker Joins Perpich Board

The Commissioner of Education, or their designee, serves on the Perpich Board of Directors as an ex officio member per the 2017 Education Omnibus Bill.

Perpich Center for Arts Education is pleased to welcome Minnesota Education Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker as an ex officio member of the Perpich Board of Directors. The Commissioner of Education, or their designee, serves on the Perpich Board of Directors as an ex officio member per the 2017 Education Omnibus Bill.

A native of Hibbing, Mary Cathryn Ricker, is a National Board Certified middle school English teacher with over a decade of classroom experience. She has taught in classrooms from St. Paul to St. Cloud to Washington to South Korea to Yemen. She previously served as executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers and as the president of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 28. Her teaching and leadership skills have been recognized with a number of other honors, including receiving the Education Minnesota Peterson-Schaubach Outstanding Leadership Award, qualifying as a semifinalist for the NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence, and serving as a featured contributor in the Annenberg Foundation’s national professional development series, “Write in the Middle.” She earned her undergraduate degree in English with a mathematics minor at the University of Saint Thomas, and completed her graduate work in Teacher Leadership at the University of Minnesota.