Judith Summerfield
American university scholar/teacher
Judith Pearl Summerfield is an American scholar, teacher, curriculum/program developer, and writer. Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY), she served as University Dean for Undergraduate Education (2003-2009) at CUNY, and Dean for General Education at Queens College from 2009 until her retirement in 2015. Author or editor of ten books, she has received a number of awards for her work, notably the 1986 Modern Language Association (MLA) Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best book on pedagogy and the New York State Professor of the Year award by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1998). In 2018, Summerfield was named a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Pittsburgh School of Education.
Education and Teaching
Summerfield earned a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) with an English and History double major and an M.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh (1960, 1963). She completed teacher certification and taught English and history at Schenley High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She then worked as a research assistant in Robert Glaser's Learning, Research and Development Center at Pitt and also taught composition and literature as a graduate assistant in the English Department.
Summerfield began teaching in New York City in the 1970s, first as a part-time instructor at Bronx Community College, and then, at Queens College, CUNY, at the start of the Open Admissions plan that guaranteed every New York City high school graduate a place in CUNY, tuition free. If they did not meet entrance standards, Open Admissions students were required at some of the colleges to enroll in "remedial" courses to improve their proficiencies in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Summerfield played a central role in the Queens English Project, a federally funded program that brought high school and college teachers together to build pathways for student success, while offering free tutoring in writing, reading, and math.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Judith Summerfield” is american university scholar/teacher. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Judith, Summerfield and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american university scholar/teacher” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112360105. VIAF identifies the subject as 233163233. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2009, 2015 and 1986.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Judith Summerfield”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Judith Summerfield primary sources, Judith Summerfield archive and Judith research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Judith Summerfield”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Judith Summerfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.