Noteworthy graduates: Edward Summers, college research director

Born in the South Bronx to parents who were “determined that their kids would make something of themselves,” Edward Summers flirted with the idea of being a doctor as a middle school student at the Paul Robeson Medical Magnet School in the Bronx. Instead turning to law and public policy, he organized the first student government at Washington Irving HS and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Urban and Public Policy at the New School for Management and Urban Policy. Now, as the director of the Kelly Adirondack Research Center at Union College, Summers drives the research agenda for the study of the Adirondack Park, examining the “tension between conservation and economic development.” Summers credits his success to his experience in New York City public schools, including a 2nd-grade teacher who rewarded her class with a pizza party to a high school history teacher who engaged his students with classroom debates.

I grew up in a family of 12, and we were all public school kids. We all went through the New York City school system. Growing up in the ’80s in the South Bronx was an interesting experience. It was a low-income, ethnically diverse community, but it was a community in the true sense of a community. A lot of the elderly folks were the watchdogs of the neighborhood, making sure kids wer…