Catching Up with Kathy Flynn
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If you’ve ever experienced walking across campus with Kathy Flynn, you know it’s not easy to keep up with her. It seems that living in California for 25 years has not slowed down her New York pace. So, where is she running to and what’s the hurry? Aside from fulfilling her responsibilities as Chair of the Credit ESL Division, writing numerous articles for ESL journals, publishing ESL texts (she’s written 11 so far), and winning awards (she just received the 2007 Dr. William L. Parker Exceptional Service Award for honored faculty), Kathy was recently elected CATESOL’s incoming president for 2008-2009 for California and Nevada. So, don’t expect her to be slowing down anytime soon. As president, she will continue to meet with legislators, help raise money for books, advocate for better teaching conditions, attend numerous board meetings a year, write articles for newsletters, give talks, attend conferences all over the state, and ensure that the organization remains fiscally sound. Then, there’s the planning and organizing of the state CATESOL conference in Pasadena in 2009 with an expected 4,000 participants. One of the reasons Kathy is so looking forward to the conference is its theme of the Whole Learner. She believes that there is “too much emphasis on testing and assessing the end product rather than on the journey of learning.” Kathy’s interest in ESL stems from having grandparents who spoke either French, German, or Portuguese at home and from growing up in culturally diverse New York City. She has a BA in Linguistics, and after receiving an MA in Applied Linguistics from CUNY, she left “temporarily” for California to complete a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at USC. Many of you might not know, however, that Kathy also had a professional life in the business world. Having taken statistics and data processing courses at USC to prepare to write a dissertation on statistical analyses of language, Kathy worked for five years as a systems analyst for two large computer companies. She managed to find time to teach at night at GCC, and when a full-time position opened for someone with ESL and computer skills, she was the perfect fit for the job. She left the business world, happy to rejoin academia. At that time, the number of non-native speakers of English at GCC was rapidly increasing, creating a need for separate divisions of ESL and English. Kathy was elected the first chair of Credit ESL at Glendale in 1992. Several years later, she managed the 2004 Accreditation Report and was Planning Director for a year and a half until her return to Division Chair. On a more personal note, Kathy enjoys traveling. After the CATESOL conference in 2009, she plans to travel to Argentina for the first time and to Greece, where she has previously lived and taught ESL and where she once took a group of USC undergraduates for the summer. When I asked her about her Greek, she told me she is “fluent in the present tense.” She also speaks enough French and German to “shop and change a plane reservation.” In 1998, Kathy toured Asia for McGraw Hill, where she did teacher training and promoted their “Connect with English” series, of which she is a lead author. How does she keep up with the pace? It must be in the genes. Her grandmother, for example, just turned 100. (Kathy attributes her grandmother’s longevity to “plenty of coffee all day long.”) When Kathy isn’t running around campus, writing books, or flying off to meetings, she practices yoga twice a week, takes long walks, and goes wine tasting with friends at local wineries. At home, she has two rescue cats who demand her attention and don’t understand the word “No.” Has she tried it in Greek, I wonder? When I asked
Kathy what her favorite relaxation activity was, she didn’t hesitate to
reply, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zero.”
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