Rate My Professor Kim Gunter

Kimberly Gunter is Professor of English at Fairfield University’s College of Arts and Sciences, serving as Director of the Core Writing program. She holds a BA and MA from Middle Tennessee State University and a PhD from the University of Illinois, earned in 2001. Gunter joined Fairfield University in 2017, where she authored a new writing program integral to the revised core curriculum. Under her leadership, the Core Writing program has achieved national acclaim, receiving the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Writing Program Certificate of Excellence in 2023 and the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum’s Exemplary Established WAC Program Award in the same year. In recognition of her contributions, she was promoted to full Professor in 2025. Gunter has been instrumental in advocating for improved labor structures in writing instruction, emphasizing disciplinary expertise and equitable working conditions, and has overseen the program's adaptation to challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and the integration of generative AI through dedicated working groups.

Her academic interests center on writing program administration, the teaching of academic writing, and queer, working-class, and Appalachian rhetorics. Gunter’s publications have appeared in leading journals such as QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Enculturation, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and Composition Forum. Key works include “Transforming Academic Writing through Rhetorical Dialectic” in the Journal of Basic Writing (2011), “In Our Names: Rewriting the U.S. Death Penalty” (2011), “Advocacy, Independence, and the Painful Kairotic Moment for Rhetoric and Composition” in WPA: Writing Program Administration (2019), and “Curricular Success Amid Labor Instability: A WAC Program’s First Five Years” in Composition Forum (2024, co-authored). Prior to Fairfield, she co-developed writing programs at Appalachian State University. Actively engaged in university governance, Gunter has served on the Educational Planning Committee and General Faculty Senate. She organizes workshops on topics like feminist takes on queering pedagogy and community-engaged learning, moderates faculty writing events such as Professors Write!, and co-sponsors lectures on women’s rhetorics and grace in literature.