Academic Affairs

Jennifer Summit received her Ph.D. in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1995. She served as the Dean of Undergraduate Education and Academic Planning at San Francisco State since 2013. She was previously at Stanford University from 1995 - 2013, where she was a professor of English and served in multiple administrative and leadership capacities. Summit was Stanford's director of integrated learning, the chair of the Committee for the Review of the Undergraduate Major and the chair of the University Writing and Oral Communication Requirements Revision. She also served for three years as the chair of the department of English at Stanford, and co-founded and directed the university's Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. In 2012, she served as an American Council on Education Fellow at San Jose State University, where she led the Provost's Task Force on Student Engagement.

A widely-published scholar of medieval and early modern English Literature, Dr. Summit has received major fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Modern Language Association. Summit's scholarly interests bridge the medieval and early modern periods and focus on the histories of reading, literature, and knowledge, with a special interest in literacy and the disciplines today. She has also published widely on issues of curriculum design, student learning and innovation in higher education.