Aces of Trades: Margaret Sumner is sharing her love of history through teaching

Drew Bracken
·3 min read
Margaret Sumner is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University at Marion. As a history professor, she said she is "especially interested in taking students out into the wider Marion community to meet and talk to history professionals at museums, historical societies, and libraries." Her students are studying the "history of women's activism by visiting the Marion Women’s Club, talking to current members, reading through club records that date back to the 1890s, and creating history presentations based on their research.”

She found her dream career and now she considers herself “incredibly lucky.”

“I was a total bookworm growing up,” recalled Margaret Sumner. “My favorite place in the world was our town’s public library. I dreamed of being a writer or a teacher when I was a kid, so I’m pretty much working my dream job now.”

Today, Sumner is associate professor of history at OSU Marion.

“I teach American history courses that range from the revolution to the gilded age, as well as courses on women’s history," she explained. "I also teach the historical ‘methods’ course where history majors start learning the skills and methods needed for historical research.”

“In all my courses,” she added, “I’m especially interested in taking students out into the wider Marion community to meet and talk to history professionals at museums, historical societies, and libraries. I want them to realize research often involves more than surfing the internet. In my women's history course, for example, my students study the history of women's activism by visiting the Marion Women’s Club, talking to current members, reading through club records that date back to the 1890s, and creating history presentations based on their research that they share with the public.”

Sumner grew up in Reading, Massachusetts, a suburb north of Boston. She graduated from high school there in 1990, Mount Holyoke College in 1994 with a major in history and a minor in French, then earned a master’s and PhD at Rutgers.

“As a college senior, I took a class on the study of historical biography,” she said. “For my final project, I decided to research the life of a 19th century teacher. I spent months looking for information about her life, visiting libraries, historical societies, dusty old bookstores, and creepy graveyards! I realized I loved the ‘detective work’ of research, the challenge of using that research to write a history of a woman’s life for others to read, and the chance to talk to everyone about it. I began thinking about becoming a history professor after that experience.”

After earning her master’s and PhD, Sumner came to Ohio State in 2006.

“Margaret has always been able to translate her excitement about history to her students,” assessed Greg Rose, the dean and director at OSU Marion. “She’s also sought out opportunities for students to engage in the local history that’s all around them, but they may be unaware of. In the last few years, the engagement of her students with community history has increased as her students are helping document and save the local history of Marion. It’s a great example of the outreach of Ohio State in action.”

“I really love the combination of teaching, community service work and research,” Sumner responded. “I want my students to have the same sense of intellectual engagement and historical adventure I had as a college student. I want them to love learning how to ask their own historical questions, experience the challenges of finding answers, and then share their discoveries with others. Not all my students want to become historians, but I hope everyone of them will find the critical thinking skills learned in my classroom will come in handy in any career they choose.”

“I moved from central New Jersey to Ohio in a van with my computer, a futon and a very irritated cat," she concluded. "It’s challenging to juggle all these projects at times, and I sometimes wish there were 48 hours in a day, but I’m never bored!”

The Ohio State University at Marion is located at 1465 Mt. Vernon Ave. in Marion. For more information, call 740-389-6786 or log on osumarion.osu.edu.

Aces of Trades is a weekly series focusing on people and their jobs — whether they’re unusual jobs, fun jobs or people who take ordinary jobs and make them extraordinary. If you have a suggestion for a future profile, let us know at news@marionstar.com.

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: OSU Marion associate professor shares her love of history