May 29, 2009
Summers named associate vice
chancellor at UWSP
An associate professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of
Wisconsin-Stevens Point has been named the Associate Vice Chancellor for Teaching,
Learning and Academic Programs in the Office of Academic Affairs.
Gregory Summers will begin his new position on June 8, working on all administrative aspects of
the teaching and learning environment at UWSP. He will help develop and review academic and student
learning programs as well as help with faculty and staff development. He will also develop
curricular models for broadly incorporating ideas of diversity to ensure that the curriculum
meets the standards of liberal education for all students. Summers will also serve as the campus
ombudsman for student concerns.
As the chair of the History Department, Summers has helped lead a comprehensive assessment-based
reform of the department’s curriculum. He has also served on UWSP’s General Education Policy Review
Committee, attended the Higher Learning Commission Assessment Academy Workshop and participated in
the Faculty Alliance for Creating and Enhancing Teaching Strategies.
Summers is a specialist in environmental history, American environmental politics and the
history of technology, industrialization and consumption. He is the author of “Consuming
Nature: Environmentalism in the Fox River Valley, 1850-1950,” published through the University
Press of Kansas in 2006, and is working on a second book, “The Comforts of Nature: A Natural
History of the American Home,” to be published with the University of Washington
Press.
A native of Holmesville, Ohio, Summers holds a doctorate from UW-Madison, a master’s degree from
the University of California-Santa Barbara and two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Akron
in Akron, Ohio, where he also earned a certificate of environmental studies. He is a member of the
American Society for Environmental History and the Society for the History of
Technology.
He and his wife, Shari, who works in Residential Living at UWSP, live in Stevens Point
with their two children.
