Over twenty years ago, Jodi Crandall and Dick Tucker accepted an appointment from TESOL President Joy Reid to serve on the Association Advancement Committee. This group of senior leaders consisted of Jim Alatis, Ed Anthony, Rick Jenks, Joan Morley, and Russ Campbell, as well as Jodi and Dick. After months of investigation and after having conducted a feasibility study, these leaders recommended that TESOL fund the establishment of a foundation to support original empirical research on key issues in our field.
Now, more than two decades later, Jodi and Dick serve as Trustees of TIRF – the Foundation that resulted from the important groundwork done by the members of the Association Advancement Committee.
Of course, their work with TIRF is not the only professional service Jodi and Dick have undertaken. Jodi has been the President of TESOL, the President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Applied Linguistics. She has travelled to many countries as an Academic Specialist for the U.S. State Department. She has recently retired as the Founding Director of the PhD Program in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dick has been the President of the Center for Applied Linguistics and the President of the TIRF Board of Trustees. He has also spent several years working as a Language Education Advisor for the International Division of the Ford Foundation in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa. He has recently retired as the Paul Mellon University Professor of Applied Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University.
During the months of October and November we are running a targeted fund-drive to honor the life-long service and many professional accomplishments of Dick and Jodi. Were either of them your teacher or your colleague? Were you inspired by their research or by talks and workshops they offered? Did their leadership inspire you to excel in our profession? If so, please join us in recognizing Dick and Jodi by honoring them with a donation to TIRF.
TIRF accepts donations online via credit card – click here to learn more. If you prefer to send a check drawn on a U.S.-based bank account, please write it to “TIRF” and mail it to TIRF, 177 Webster St., #220, Monterey, CA 93940.
We hope that you will join us in honoring Jodi and Dick via a gift to TIRF during the upcoming giving season!
