Amy C. Kimme Hea, PhD
2025 University Faculty Service Award
Amy C. Kimme Hea is the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Success in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. She oversees curriculum review, assessment, enrollment management, student recruitment and retention, advising, and engagement. Dr. Kimme Hea leads the SBS Undergraduate Council and serves on university-wide committees. Collaborating with the Dean’s Office instructional team, she advances projects focused on student learning, teacher development, and curriculum innovation.
Dr. Kimme Hea earned her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University in 2001 and joined the University of Arizona’s Rhetoric, Composition, and Teaching of English Program faculty in the Department of English. She spent over a decade in leadership roles in the Writing Program, serving as Associate Director (2004–2012) and Director (2012–2015). A key achievement during her directorship was co-leading a five-year longitudinal study on student writers’ metacognitive and affective relationships with writing and literacy, supported by grants from the National Council of Teachers of English and the Council of Writing Program Administrators.
Her scholarly work spans composition studies, computers and composition, and professional and technical communication, with notable publications on new media, hypertext theory, spatial rhetoric, assessment, and service learning. Dr. Kimme Hea edited Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers, which was nominated for a Computers and Composition best book award, and her 2014 special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly on social media, is the journal’s most widely read issue. She also serves on the editorial review board for Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy and Writing Commons.
A dedicated educator, Dr. Kimme Hea teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, rhetoric, technology studies, and technical communication, earning accolades for her teaching excellence. Nationally, she holds executive roles with the Council of Writing Program Administrators and the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition. At the University of Arizona, she has served as a Faculty Fellow for Program Assessment and participated in the Academic Leadership Institute.