Marie Butcher

Professor Marie Butcher is the Program Head and lead faculty member for the English for Academic and Professional Purposes program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). With a career spanning academia, language instruction, and creative writing, she specializes in supporting international students and non-native English speakers through advanced research, writing, editing, intercultural communication, and critical thinking.

Her academic background includes an MA in Comparative Literature (San Francisco State University, 1993), a California TESOL Teaching Credential (1994), and a Global Leadership Diploma (University for Peace, 2023). She has taught at MIIS since 2002, following a 20-year tenure at Monterey Peninsula College, and has led language programs for diplomats and business professionals globally.

• Key Research Areas: TESOL, intercultural communication theories, sustainable development goals (SDGs), poetry as a tool for peace, and conflict transformation.
• Teaching Highlights: Courses such as Advanced Rhetoric & Genre, Intercultural Communication Skills, and Peace & the SDGs in Costa Rica (co-designed in 2023).

Publications include pending manuscripts like The Monterey Model and Cultivating Intercultural Communication Skills, alongside poetry collections in Porter Gulch Review (2024), Al-Araby (2024), and Becoming River: From the Mountains to the Sea (2025). Her 7 C’s for Writing pedagogy is under development.

Grants and Recognition: Multiple KWD Collaborative in Conflict-Transformation grants enabled bringing notable speakers to MIIS. She serves on the Jan Knippers Black Fund for Human Rights Speakers Series committee.

Creative Contributions: As Editor-in-Chief for the 2025 multilingual anthology Doves Born of Flames, she bridges poetry, policy, and peace studies. Her poetry has been translated into Arabic and featured in international journals.