Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs

Thomas Summerhill
Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs
Director, Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science
Associate Professor, History

Thomas Summerhill is associate dean for academic and student affairs in the College of Social Science and serves as the director of the Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science.

He teaches courses in history, specializing in 19th century U.S. History, with particular emphasis on social and political movements, rural history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and comparative/transnational agricultural movements.

Dr. Summerhill is the author of Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York, and co-editor, with James C. Scott, of Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarian Radicalism in Comparative Context.  He is currently working on a new book project, Fighting the Union: Anti-War Politics in the Civil War North.

Dr. Summerhill served as a lead investigator on the Michigan Agricultural Heritage Project, heading a team of researchers at MSU that contracted with the Michigan Department of Transportation to develop preservation criteria for historic rural sites.   

He has served as a faculty facilitator for the Battle Creek and Lansing school districts’ Teaching American History project and in-service training programs in New York State.

Dr. Summerhill earned his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York, College at Cortland, in 1984, his master’s from Syracuse University in 1986, and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1993.

Contact information:

Thomas Summerhill, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs
College of Social Science
Michigan State University
202 Berkey Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824
Telephone: (517) 355-6673
Thomas.Summerhill@ssc.msu.edu