Kimberly (Kim) L. Geeslin was born in Stanford, California and grew up in New Hampshire. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire. She later earned her M.A.in Hispanic Linguistics (1995) and her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (1999) from the University of Arizona. Kim joined the faculty in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in the fall of 1999.
Her research focused on the sociolinguistic variation in Spanish and how learners of Spanish acquire its sociolinguistically variable properties. Kim was also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Second Language Studies and in the Cognitive Science Program. In the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, she served in various administrative roles, including Director of the Hispanic Linguistics program, Associate Chair, and Interim Chair. She was widely recognized as an exceptional teacher as well as an outstanding mentor to both graduate and undergraduate students. This was reflected in the numerous teaching and mentoring awards Kim received during her remarkable career, including the David and Cheryl Morley Career Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), and the Carol Hostetter Lifetime Teaching Career Award (2002).
Kim was an internationally recognized scholar who authored three monographs and six edited volumes along with more than 85 book chapters and articles, many co-authored with her students, that have appeared in top-tier journals. She was also committed to service to the profession. She served as co-editor of the Second Language Acquisition Research book series (Routledge) and the Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics book series (John Benjamins) in addition to serving as Associate Editor for Studies in Second Language Acquisition and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics and on the editorial boards for four other journals.
Kim was also a talented and trusted administrator. In 2017, she was named Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs for the Bloomington campus. In this role, she served as Director of the Initiative for the Advancement of Women Faculty, coordinating the Women in Leadership series and working on initiatives to support mid-career and underrepresented faculty. In December 2022, she was named Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs at IU Bloomington. Shortly after she assumed this role, she unexpectedly passed away on January 25, 2023. Kim made a lasting impact on this campus and on the many, many people who interacted with her. She will be fondly remembered for her compassion, generosity of spirit, and profound kindness, and she is deeply missed.
A Bloomington native, Dr. Hipskind was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in the fall of 1994 and graduated with a degree in Biology in 1995. During his years at IU, he was on both the cross country and track and field teams, lettering in the latter all four years. He was also a member of Phi Gamma Delta, and was selected to receive the Wilkinson Award, which honors the fraternity’s most outstanding senior nationwide. After graduation, he attended the IU School of Medicine, graduating in 1999. He joined IU Athletics in 2003, and over the years went from serving as the football team’s physician and Director of Sports Medicine to, ultimately, being IU’s first Chief Medical Officer, where he also was a member of the COVID-19 Operations team. In the summer of 2021 he became the 45th recipient of IU’s Distinguished Service Medal, and his office was renamed in his honor as the Dr. Andy S. Hipskind Chief Medical Officer Physician’s Office. He died on September 18, 2021, a week shy of his 49th birthday.
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