Headshot of Tim Peeples

Tim Peeples

Professor of Humanities and Senior Associate Provost Emeritus

Department: Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences

Office and address: Powell Building, office 108A 2200 Campus Box Elon, NC 27244

Phone number: (336) 278-5613

Brief Biography

Tim Peeples is currently Senior Associate Provost Emeritus, and Professor of Humanities at Elon University. He also holds the position of Senior Scholar in the Center for Engaged Learning, an international research center that develops and synthesizes rigorous research related to high-quality, engaged learning in higher education. In addition to pursuing a range of scholarly projects, many aimed at advancing engaged teaching and learning, he has committed his final years before retirement to the teaching and mentoring of first-year students.

Peeples joined the Elon faculty in 1998 as Assistant Professor of English and founding Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, as well as Director of the Writing Center. After receiving tenure and promotion to associate professor, he was invited to be the first Faculty Administrative Fellow to serve in the Office of the President, for then President Leo M. Lambert, from 2004 to 2006, where among other duties he helped establish Elon's School of Law. 

Peeples served as Associate Dean of Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, from 2006 to 2010, Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs from 2010-16, and Senior Associate Provost from 2016-23. In 2022-23, Peeples also served as Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Throughout his first 25 years at Elon, and especially his 19 years in administration, Peeples' work focused on enhancing faculty development, broadly understood, and advancing high-quality, high-impact educational practices and the campus intellectual climate.

During his initial years at Elon, Peeples led the creation of a nationally recognized undergraduate curriculum in Professional Writing and Rhetoric and represented the faculty on Academic Council from 2000-2003. He received the first (with Maurice Levesque) Excellence in Service/Leadership Award from Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, in 2004, and a Faculty Excellence award in 2010 for exemplary leadership and commitment to the values of a liberal arts education.

Peeples has led numerous efforts to better support the work of Elon's teacher-scholars and was instrumental in increasing the percentage of tenure-track faculty at Elon. In 2007-08, Peeples co-chaired with Tom Henricks the Presidential Task Force on Scholarship, one of the cornerstones of Elon’s 2010-20 strategic plan, the Elon Commitment. In 2018-20, he served as a member on the planning committee for and as one of the primary authors of the Boldly Elon strategic plan for 2020-30, which is designed to extend the work of the Elon Commitment and blaze new pathways in mentoring, signature work, and course embedded undergraduate research.

Peeples was one of the central figures in the study and establishment of the university’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, designed to advance the quality of teaching and learning across campus. He was later a key architect of and helped found Elon's Center for Engaged Learning. Peeples also helped found Elon's Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society; Elon's Center for Research on Global Engagement; Elon's Center for Writing Excellence; and Elon's Center for Design Thinking. Throughout his years in the provost’s office, Peeples worked directly with all of the above-mentioned entities, as well as many others designed to support and advance excellence in high-quality teaching, learning, inquiry, and scholarship, including the Honors Program, Undergraduate Research Program, and Faculty Research & Development Committee.

Prior to joining the faculty at Elon, Peeples gained ten years of experience teaching first-year, business, and professional writing at Northern Arizona University, Purdue University, and West Georgia College (now, State University of West Georgia). During that time, Peeples also developed and directed a summer writing program based on pre-engineering curricula for first-generation Navajo, Hopi, and Hispanic students, was Assistant Director of Composition, Assistant Director of the Writing Center, Assistant Director for a PhD program in rhetoric and composition, Assistant Director of business writing, and Assistant Director of professional writing.

    Education

    PhD, Purdue University -- Rhetoric and Composition; Professional Writing

    MA, Northern Arizona University -- Rhetoric and Composition; Critical Theory

    BA, The College of Wooster -- English (major); History and Secondary Education (minors)

     

    Courses Taught

     

    Research in English, English 499 (Professional Writing and Rhetoric)

    Professional Writing and Rhetoric Senior Seminar, English 497

    Independent Study, English 491 (English Education – writing pedagogy)

    Writing Internship, English 381 (professional writing)

    COE 375, Life Entrepreneur (sophomore transition course)

    Writing Center Workshop, English 319 

    Visual Rhetoric and Document Design, English 312

    Document Research, Management, and Production, English 311

    Special Topics in Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Document Design, English 304

    English Studies in Britain, “Life and Literacy,” English 251 

    Writing Studies Workshop, English 219

    Introduction to Professional Writing and Rhetoric, English 215

    Style and Editing, English 211 

    Survey of Professional Writing and Rhetoric, English 204

    College Writing, Honors, English 110

    College Writing, English 110 

    Research

    Peeples’ disciplinary research agenda can be broadly defined as theorizing "the (re)production of rhetorical space." His work has focused broadly on the ways rhetoric and human geographies interact to (re)produce -- both change and maintain -- one another.

    This scholarly agenda has led Peeples to focus on examining and influencing the ways rhetorical space is re-produced in and through the everyday practices of professional writing and management/administration; theorizing more critically reflective and action-oriented intersections between professional writing and management/administration/organization; and theorizing the re-production of rhetorical space (e.g., writing programs) and identities (e.g., program administrators and students) within them.

    Peeples' research also extends to high-impact and engaged learning practices in higher education, including writing in the disciplines, undergraduate research, mentoring, community-based learning/client projects, and global engagement.

    Emerging areas of research for Peeples include work on sophistic rhetorics, (post)humanism, and liberal education.

     

    Publications

    Sample Publications

    • Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. Addison, Wesley, and Longman, 2003.
    • Four Worlds of Writing: Inquiry and Action in Context, 4th edition. Co-authored with Janice Lauer et al. New York: Pearson/Addison, Wesley, and Longman, August 2000. 
    • “Mapping Understandings of Global Engagement.” Mind the Gap: Global Learning at Home and Abroad. Eds. Namaste, N. & Sturgill, A. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing (2020): Chapter 1.
    • “Multi-Institutional SoTL: A Case Study of Practices and Outcomes.” (with P. Felten and J. Moore) Applying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning beyond One Classroom. Eds. Friberg, J. C. & McKinney, K.. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (2019): 14-27.
    • "Revisualizing Composition: How First-Year Writers Use Composing Technologies,” (with Jessie Moore et al) Computers and Writing39 (2016): 1-13. 
    • “ ‘Mentoring is Sharing the Excitement of Discovery’: Faculty Perceptions of Undergraduate Research Mentoring” (with Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler and Paul Miller) Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 23 (2015): 377-393.
    • “Re-Mapping Professional Writing: Articulating the State of the Art and Composition Studies” (with Bill Hart-Davidson). Exploring Composition Studies. Eds. Paul Matsuda and Kelly Ritter. Utah State University Press (June, 2012)
    • “Forging Rhetorical Subjects: Problem-Based Learning in the Writing Classroom” (with Paula Rosinski). Composition Studies 40.2, 2012: 9-32. (Award recognition in Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals, 2013)
    •  “Chronos and Kairos, Strategies and Tactics: The Case of Constructing Elon University’s Professional Writing and Rhetoric Program.” (with Paula Rosinski and Michael Strickland) Composition Studies, Spring 2007. (Special issue on undergraduate majors in rhetoric and writing studies)
    • “Techniques, Technologies, and the Deskilling of Rhetoric and Composition: Managing the Knowledge-Intensive Work of Writing Instruction.” (with Bill Hart-Davidson) Labor, Writing Technologies, and the Shaping of Composition in the Academy. Eds. Pam Takayoshi and Patricia Sullivan. Hampton Press, 2005.
    • “The WPA Apprenticeship: Learning to be Good Citizens of/for Our Institutions.” (with Jennifer Morrison) Culture Shock and the Practice of Profession: Training the Next Wave in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Virginia Anderson and Susan Romano. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005.
    • “Program Administrators as/and Postmodern Planners: Frameworks for Making Tomorrow’s Writing Space.” The Writing Program Administrator as Theorist: Making Knowledge Work. Eds. Shirley K Rose and Irwin Weiser. Portsmouth, NH: Hienemann-Boyton-Cook, 2002.
    • “ ‘Seeing’ the WPA through Postmodern Mapping.” The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher: Inquiry in Action and Reflection. Eds. Shirley K Rose and Irwin Weiser. Portsmouth, NH: Hienemann-Boyton/Cook, 1999.
    • “Grading the ‘Subject’: Questions of Expertise and Evaluation.” (with Bill Hart-Davidson) Grading in the Post-Process Classroom. Eds. Libby Allison, Lizbeth Bryant, and Maureen Hourigan.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1997.