CSC history professor becomes dean

Dr. Janie Park, CSC president, announced this week that Dr. Joel Hyer, who has served as a history professor at CSC during the past 10 years, has been hired and will assume the duties immediately.

Hyer is now one of the three academic deans at CSC, joining Dr. Charles Snare and Dr. Margaret Crouse on the newly formed deans council. As part of their duties in administering CSC’s three schools, the deans will collaborate to conduct meetings of all CSC faculty members each month.

Hyer has become known at CSC as an energetic and knowledgeable educator. In addition to serving as professor of history, Hyer has been chairman of the Department of Communication and Social Sciences and director of the American Indian studies program. He has been nominated twice for CSC’s teaching excellence award.

Hyer also has acted as co-sponsor of the White Buffalo Club, CSC’s American Indian student organization, and the Campus Historical Forum, a student club for history. As sponsor of the latter, he has been active each year in study away trips for students to learn firsthand about history at locations such as Boston, the American Southwest, San Francisco and Canada. He also has led the group in sponsoring its annual Oktoberfest celebration.

As a leader in general studies and assessment, Hyer was on a five-member team that delivered the capstone presentation at Chicago for the Higher Learning Commission’s Academy for the Assessment of Student Learning in November 2010. CSC was among the first eight institutions to complete the four-year project, which brought praise to CSC for its high level of faculty involvement and eagerness to improve its general studies offerings.

Before moving to the Nebraska panhandle, Hyer taught history courses at the University of California at Riverside, San Diego State University, and California State University at San Marcos.

Hyer has numerous publications to his name, including a scholarly article that was nominated for an award sponsored by the Army Historical Foundation. His most well-known work, he said, is arguably his dissertation, which was later modified into a book, “We Are Not Savages: Native Americans in Southern California and the Pala Reservation, 1840-1920.” It was published by Michigan State University Press in 2001.

Hyer is a native of Los Angeles County. In 1999, he received a doctorate from the University of California at Riverside, with a major in Native American history and minors in 20th century U.S. History and colonial Latin American history.