Kathi Bailey, Our Consummate Connector, Will Retire After 40 Years

Professor Renée Jourdenais offered the following reflection on the retirement of her longtime colleague in TESOL/TFL Kathi Bailey. 

As we celebrate the coming of spring, we’re also celebrating Professor Kathi Bailey’s distinguished career and upcoming retirement from the Middlebury Institute. As I reflected on what a 40 plus year dedication to MIIS means, here are a few things that came to mind:

• Seven different institute leaders.
• One near merger.
• One actual merger.
• Four name changes.
• Ten different logos…and corresponding versions of business cards.
• Multiple school and program configurations.
• More than 80 graduation celebrations.
• Numerous quirky colleagues.
• Far too many faculty assemblies.
• Even more faculty meetings.

…but most importantly (to us!)

One exceptional program that she’s built and nurtured for almost half a century!

As many of you have experienced, her teaching over the years has been exceptional.  Students have always loved her classes and appreciated her detailed feedback and guidance. Her dedication to the classroom has been recognized through the Leslie Eliason Excellence in Teaching Award at the Institute and the Allen Griffin Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Monterey Peninsula area.

Kathi has also mentored hundreds of students and alumni over the years, many of whom have become exceptional leaders in the field themselves. In fact, recognizing that our students were being hired into leadership roles, she wanted to ensure that they were receiving the best training possible for the roles they were about to play. As a result, she created the first—and one of the very few, if not only—certificates in language program administration.    

Kathi is extremely generous with her time—and publications. It’s easy to count dozens of published works that Kathi has coauthored with students…and important to note that in many of these, the students have first name credit. There aren’t many master’s programs where students graduate with published articles to their name and a brilliant coauthor to boot.

Over the years, she’s involved students, alumni, and colleagues in writing, research, editing and conference organization. In fact, it might actually be impossible to NOT be involved in a project that she takes on! And no one can keep a team on track like she can. Her delegation skills and to-do lists are legendary.

She’s also the consummate “connector,” incredibly generous with her professional contacts, and makes sure that everyone is introduced. Students have always been in awe of all the field-famous people she’s introduced them to, whether at a conference, at a MIIS talk, or through classroom visitors: recorded, virtual, or live.

Kathi’s professional contributions to the larger field are too numerous to list, but you’ve all experienced them and we’ll highlight a few here: dozens of books and edited volumes, more than a hundred journal articles and chapters, presentations and invited workshops given around the world. Perhaps her most notable professional achievements were leading three of the central organizations in our field: She served as president of TESOL, president of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), and president of The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF). She has also received the James Alatis Award for Service to TESOL and the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from AAAL.

We’ve been supremely fortunate that she chose MIIS as her home for these 42 years! 

We hope you’ll join us in wishing Kathi a happy retirement by sharing memories, photos, and good wishes in the e-book that we’ve started. 

And please save the date of July 1 for a virtual celebration with Kathi. Details will be forthcoming!