Robert M. Wallace holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His creative writing has appeared in many publications, most recently in North Carolina Literary Review Online, and his first collection of poetry, Hawk on a Power Line, was published by Louisiana Literature Press in 2015. His scholarly writing has appeared in several journals, notably English Education, and he has spoken at the conferences for College Composition and Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English. He researches, writes, and speaks on the best practices for teaching and evaluating writing, especially the relationship between those practices and what motivates students to read and write in their everyday lives. He continues to explore these subjects in his teaching of composition and upper-level writing courses at West Virginia State University.

In addition to his responsibilities as a Professor of English and Dean for the College of Arts and Humanities, he is on the Board of Directors for the Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences of West Virginia.