Rate My Professor Susan Neel

Susan Neel is a historian specializing in environmental history and modern U.S. history. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990, M.A. in U.S. History from the University of Utah in 1980, and B.A. in History from the University of Utah in 1977. Throughout her career, she has held positions including Associate Professor of History at Utah State University-Eastern since 2010, Instructor of History at College of Eastern Utah from 2006 to 2010, Associate Professor of History at Montana State University, Bozeman from 1990 to 2002, Assistant Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in 1989-1990, and Visiting Professor of History at University of California, Los Angeles in 1994-1995. Earlier roles include adjunct instructor positions and historical consultant work on reclamation and western water law. Neel chaired the History Department at College of Eastern Utah from 2006 to 2010, served as Chair of USU Eastern Faculty Council in 2010-2011, President of CEU Faculty Senate in 2010, and participated in committees such as the USHE General Education Task Force from 2009 to 2012 and the Lumina Foundation’s Tuning USA Project from 2009 to 2011.

Neel’s research interests encompass the American West, environmental history, tourism, and national parks. Her major publications include the co-authored book Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016); “Love among the Fossils: Earl and Pearl Douglass at Dinosaur National Monument” (Utah Historical Quarterly, 2015); “Newton Drury and the Echo Park Dam Controversy” (Forest and Conservation History, 1994), which received the Theodore Hiddy Award for Best Article in Environmental History from the American Society of Environmental Historians in 1995; and “A Place of Extremes: Nature, History and the American West” (Western Historical Quarterly, 1994), reprinted in A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West (Oxford University Press, 1996). She has been honored with the Ahmanson/Getty Foundation Research Fellowship at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Library (1994-1995), Teaching Scholar Certificate from Utah State University (2017), Instructional Development Grant and Award of Merit for Creative Use of Multimedia from Utah System of Higher Education (2008), and NEH Summer Institute participation (1996). Neel has presented public lectures at venues including the American Historical Association Annual Meeting (2017), Utah Historical Society conferences, and Brigham Young University’s Women’s Studies Conference (2012).