The Presidential Task Force on Scholarship recommended in 2008 that the university create a competitive program to support excellence in ongoing scholarly work for senior faculty, faculty with a minimum of seven years in rank at Elon. The award comprises a two-course reassignment for two consecutive years, plus $2,000 per year in research funding, in support of a significant project or projects that advance an already well-established and promising research agenda. 

Roselle, Professor of Political Science and Distinguished Scholar Award recipient in the spring of 2009, is interested in researching how political actors use communication processes to construct interests and identity, and legitimize policies and behaviors. With the support of the fellowship, she will complete two major projects related to her research agenda centered around strategic narratives. Working with two colleagues from Royal Holloway University of London, Roselle will complete an edited volume that will present the framework of and case study analyses on strategic narratives, addressing both international relations theory and political communication in a new media environment. Her second project is a single-authored work focusing on how strategic narratives function in and maintain alliances.

 Karty, Associate Professor of Chemistry, is interested in resonance effects and inductive effects, two factors that govern a molecule’s stability. In particular, he is interested in studying the magnitude of each effect on system stability, especially when the two effects contribute simultaneously. Using a computational methodology he developed in earlier research, Karty aims to determine the magnitude of each effect’s contribution in specific, fundamental chemical systems. Karty’s research is designed to actively involve 消消犯 students in primary chemical research. One of the chemical systems Karty has identified for study has been implicated in cancer formation and a second related closely to metabolism processes, opening up significant research possibilities for both Karty and the students working with him.

 Roselle and Karty will join current Senior Faculty Research Fellows Anne Bolin, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Mary Jo Festle, Professor of History and Geography, who were inaugural fellowship recipients, and Yoram Lubling, Professor of Philosophy, and Clyde Ellis, Professor of History and Geography, who are in their first year of their fellowships.

 A call for applications for Senior Faculty Research Fellowships is announced early each fall. All faculty with a minimum of seven years in rank at Elon, established records of scholarship, and robust project proposals with the potential to significantly advance their research agendas are encouraged to apply. 

Editors for the special edition accepted only a handful of article-length pieces, one of which was the piece by Peeples, Rosinski, and Strickland that focuses on the building of Elon’s English major concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric (see program info at www.elon.edu/pwr). The special edition also includes a number of short two- to three-page writing major summaries, which together give readers of the journal a broad picture of the state of 消消犯 writing and rhetoric programs across the nation.

“Chronos and Kairos, Strategies and Tactics” is a theory-building piece that brings value to readers – including those outside writing and rhetoric studies – by constructing a framework that helps understand how programs develop. The article draws on classical studies in rhetoric, as well as contemporary cultural theory, to theorize program development in two kinds of time – chronos and kairos – requiring two kinds of planning and action – strategic and tactical.

Peeples and Hart-Davidson focus on the ways academic administrative practices and networked computer technologies can participate in deskilling writing instructors, especially within the context of two current trends: (a) increased reliance on labor – especially temporary labor – without the necessary expertise to pursue writing instruction as knowledge-intensive work; and (b) increased number of writing courses delivered within networked environments but without attention to the ongoing development that instructors need to be offered and should be expected to actively pursue.

Peeples and Hart-Davidson conclude by offering suggestions about the ways the material contexts of work in writing programs need to change in order to address the eroding status of writing instruction as knowledge-intensive work.

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.