Remembering...an exemplary teacher, researcher, friend

Kathleen Ellyn Kendrick, associate Professor, microbiology, died March 2, 1999, after a four-year battle with cancer. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1979 and had been a member of the OSU faculty for 15 years. Kendrick was internationally-recognized for her research on Streptomyces griseus. Just as importantly, she was well-known as an exemplary role model to students-teaching and mentoring with skill, patience, humor, and dedication until the very end.

We would like to share excerpts from the eloquent and moving tribute paid to her at her Memorial Service by her colleague Joe Krzycki:

As I watched her through the last few years, I came to think of Kathy as someone who lived her life with a sense of profound purpose. She had her eyes always set on an idea that for her surpassed the minutiae of everyday life. I think that idea was something we usually call science, but that word trivializes her motivation. I don't think Kathy was focused on an abstract concept like Science with a capital S, but rather, she was focused on the battle to expand human knowledge, to push back the dark areas and let in light. This led her to her life here, a life spent in research and the teaching of research, teaching what is known and teaching how to know. She carried out that life always with integrity, and towards the end, what can only be called superhuman dedication and resolve.

...Kathy had the highest standards in her work. She once said to me she never considered putting out small papers just to have another line on the CV. "I'll never do it that way," she said. For Kathy, each paper had to describe a major step forward, otherwise it was not something on which she wanted to see her name...She took pride in her work...I'll never forget when she came down to my office and showed me the reviewer remarks on a new journal paper. "A new and fascinating system is coming to light" the reviewer had said. You could feel her pride as though it had just sat down in a chair and put its feet up on the desk.

...But if you pressed Kathy about why she was so proud about her research accomplishments, I think she would in the end have talked about what those grants and papers meant to her grad students. To have good problems, to have interesting concepts that sharpen a young mind who is learning how to create new knowledge, this is what academic science is about. One doesn't have to look far in the past to see evidence that indicates her devotion to research was really another aspect of her devotion to teaching...On her last day, she saw her grad students, not in a group, but one at a time. Each problem and each student, she gave individual attention, even when time was short. She knew her words would guide them for some time in many ways.

Kathy was a tough teacher...I truly think that her standards expected nothing less than the very best of what is in all of us...I think she knew that she only had 10 weeks to teach those students not only a set of facts, but how to think, and how one gets those facts. She also knew that many of her students...were people who would keep the process of increasing human knowledge going. Kathy's legacy lies with them, and indeed with every one of her students...

In the last few years, Kathy's disease...was given little quarter. She granted it few days, and little respite. She worked seemingly tirelessly, chaired committees, continued teaching and writing. Time was short, but the effort she still saw as worthwhile....As time moves on, I know we will think of Kathy often. As we meet new people, who never knew her, her name and her story will be passed on. Kathy will continue to teach, and her final and lasting lesson will be one of integrity, strength and the courage to commit to ideals that transcend one's own life...