Timothy Giles

Prof. Giles joined Georgia Southern University in 2002 and retired in 2024.

— Biography from the 2024 Fall Commencement program —

Dr. Giles earned a BA in English, with a concentration in Writing and a minor in Philosophy (1982) from East Carolina University (ECU). He returned to ECU in 1984 to earn an MA in English, with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing (1986). After interning in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park with Northern Telecom, which was then an international Fortune-500 corporation, he decided that he preferred teaching and first taught full-time at Francis Marion College in Florence, SC, from 1986-1989. In 1989, Georgia Southern College hired him on a tenure-track line with what were then the departments of Developmental Studies and English & Philosophy. In 1998, he became a founding member of the Department of Writing and Linguistics, and for the BA in Writing and Linguistics, he developed an area in professional and technical writing, which has now become part of the current BA in English. In 1999, he took a three-year leave of absence to pursue a Ph.D. with the University of Minnesota’s Rhetoric, Scientific, and Technical Communication program. In 2002, after completing the coursework and passing his oral and written competency exams, he returned to Georgia Southern, where he taught while writing his dissertation, which he completed and successfully defended in 2004. Though preferring to focus on teaching, he published ten articles, including several in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication; and a book, Motives for Metaphor in Scientific and Technical Communication. He regularly presented at regional, national, and international conferences, such as the Council on Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication; Association of Teachers of Technical Writing; the College Composition and Communication Conference; National Communication Association; Computers & Writing Conference; Popular Culture Association in the South/American Culture Association in the South; and Student Success in Writing. In his scholarship, he pursued the use of metaphor and analogy in scientific and technical communication, the misuse of readability formulas in professional communication, and pedagogical issues in scientific and technical communication. During his forty-year teaching career, Dr. Giles greatly influenced his former students, not only those who went on to careers as technical communicators, but those in Business, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, and Construction Management, who were his students in professional writing courses that he taught for their respective Georgia Southern University colleges. In recognition of his contributions in teaching and to his students and his profession throughout his career, Dr. Giles is deserving of the title Professor Emeritus of English.*