Kate Farrish is an assistant professor-in-residence in the Journalism Department at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches newswriting, editing and journalism ethics.

In May 2025, she was inducted into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame by the Connecticut professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in recognition of her 40 years as a journalist in Connecticut and her 16 years as journalism instructor.

She also spent 23 years at the Hartford Courant, where she was a town news reporter, higher education writer, Eastern Connecticut Bureau Chief, assistant city editor, education editor and the city editor. In 2000, she was named origination editor of the year at The Courant.

As both a reporter and editor, she won national awards from the Education Writers Association. As a contributing writer for the nonprofit Connecticut Health I-Team (C-HIT.org), she won a Publick Occurrences Award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association for a 2018 investigative story on Connecticut nurses and addiction. In that story, she detailed how in the depths of their addiction to opioids, one nurse robbed banks to get the money to buy heroin, others ripped fentanyl patches off their nursing home patients to use themselves and others stole laptops and jewelry in their patients’ homes to buy drugs.

From 2019 to 2025, Farrish was an assistant professor of journalism at Central Connecticut State University, and before that, she taught newswriting part-time at UConn for a decade. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism with honors from UConn in 1983 and earned a master’s degree in digital communications in 2018 from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She was selected by her fellow graduates to give an address at commencement.

An active volunteer in her town of Tolland, Farrish also serves as a board member and president of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government (CFOG). She is a co-founder of the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative and serves as its board secretary.

In 2023, she was appointed by Gov. Ned Lamont to fill a vacancy on the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, and in March 2024, the governor’s nomination of her to four-year term on the commission was approved by the State Senate.

She is married to U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas O. Farrish, and they have two grown daughters.