“The WPA Apprenticeship: Learning to be Good Citizens of/for Our Institutions,” an article co-authored by Tim Peeples, associate professor of professional writing and rhetoric in the English Department, was recently published in Culture Shock and the Practice of Profession: Training the Next Wave in Rhetoric and Composition. The edited collection explores the future of graduate education in rhetoric and composition programs.
Working out of a history of rhetorical education focused on the development of citizen-leaders, the article Peeples co-authors with Jennifer Morrison (Niagara University, NY) leads section two, “Models and Frameworks for Change,” of the collection and calls for more explicit attention to graduate students’ development as what Peeples and Morrison call citizen-rhetors.
More specifically, Peeples and Morrison encourage actively involving graduate students in the institutional service and writing program administration that becomes a significant part of all but a few rhetoric and composition faculty worklives, and supporting this “apprentice” work through faculty-student mentorships.