Velsie Pate is an instructor for the Intensive English Program and the Center for Student Success and First Year Experience at the University of Mississippi. She has worked at the University of Mississippi for more than 32 years in various capacities but taught for over 13 of those 32 years.
Pate holds a B.A. in Music with a minor in English, a B.A. in English with a minor in Spanish, an M.A. in Southern Studies, and an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language and has completed her coursework for the Second Language Studies PhD. program with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics. She has passed her comprehensive exams and will next do a prospectus defense to continue her dissertation writing.
In 2021 Pate won the EDHE 303 Instructor of the Year Award from The Center for Student Success at the university. In addition to her teaching duties and coursework, she has served as advisor for the International American Student Alliance since 2016. She loves teaching and does everything she can to support, encourage, and inspire her students. Apart from her UM jobs and responsibilities, Pate has 25 years of retail and customer service experience at Wal-Mart, JCPenney, and currently, Belk Department Store in Oxford. During school breaks she works at the local Burns Belfry African American Museum or the L.Q.C. Lamar House for the City of Oxford-Tourism. Outside of work and academics, her favorite hobbies are genealogy, playing with her pets, photography, gardening, walking for exercise with her friends Deborah Purnell and Jessie Malone, and eating good food with friends, but especially with her UM dinner ladies group several times a year.
Pate resides in Oxford with her husband Randy Burt and their five cats and one dog in a neighborhood close to her mother, UM emeritus assistant professor Dr. Betty Crouther.