Steven H. Corey
Steven H. Corey
Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
623 S. Wabash Ave., Room 600
Chicago, IL 60605
scorey@colum.edu
312-369-7844
Steven H. Corey, PhD, is the dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) at Columbia College Chicago. He oversees four academic departments—American Sign Language (ASL); English and Creative Writing; Humanities, History, and Social Sciences (HHSS), including the Education program; Science and Mathematics; and the Columbia College Chicago Experience (CCCX) courses that together serve all students taking general education courses at the college. Corey is also chair of the college’s Core Curriculum Committee, and led a campus-wide reorganization of the existing Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) Core Curriculum into a broader Columbia Core Curriculum to reflect the priorities of the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.
Corey joined Columbia in 2012 as professor and chair of HHSS and served as the interim dean of LAS from 2015-2016 before being appointed LAS dean in 2017. Prior to Columbia, Corey was a professor and chair of the Department of Urban Studies at Worcester State University (WSU) in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has also taught history at The University of Rhode Island and Yeshiva University in New York City. At WSU, he received the highest faculty honor, the George I. Alden Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 2012, for innovative, student-centered pedagogy. His scholarship on inquiry-based education was also recognized by the American Historical Association with the 2011 William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the Best Article on Teaching History for “Pedagogy and Place: Merging Urban History and Environmental History with Active Learning” (Journal of Urban History, January 2010).
His research and teaching interests are in urban and environmental studies, public history, social history, and public policy. While completing his doctorate on the history of solid waste management in New York City, he served as research curator for the noted exhibition Garbage! The History and Politics of Trash in New York City (Gottesman Exhibition Hall, The New York Public Library, 1994-1995). He co-authored with the exhibition’s guest curator, Dr. Elizabeth Fee, the volume Garbage! The History of Politics and Trash in New York City (New York Public Library, 1994), which won the Katherine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab Exhibition Catalogue Award for Excellence from the American Library Association in 1996.
In addition to other peer-reviewed articles and scholarly works, Dr. Corey is co-editor with Carl Zimring (Pratt Institute) of Coastal Metropolis: Environmental Histories of Modern New York City (University of Pittsburgh Press, December 2020); co-editor with Dr. Lisa Krissoff Boehm (Bridgewater State University) of The American Urban Reader: History and Theory, Second Edition (Routledge, 2020), First Edition (Routledge, 2011); and co-author with Dr. Krissoff Boehm of America’s Urban History (Routledge, 2015), available in both English and Chinese language editions.
In addition to peer-reviewed articles and scholarly works, Corey is co-author with Lisa Krissoff Boehm, PhD, of America’s Urban History (Routledge, 2015), and co-editor with Krissoff Boehm of The American Urban Reader: History and Theory (Routledge, 2011), now being revised for its second edition. He is currently working on a proposal for an anthology on the environmental history of water and urbanization in New York City.
Corey has appeared widely in television and radio programs, as well as newspaper and magazine articles for his expertise on waste management and urban affairs. He remains actively involved in public history, public policy, and community development issues, and served as an expert witness for the State of Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General, advocating greater public access to the Rhode Island shoreline (most recently in 2014), a board member of the Southside Community Land Trust in Providence, Rhode Island (2007-2011), and an exhibition historian for Got Food? Creating a Hunger Free Community (Worcester Historical Museum, 2007-2008).
Corey holds a PhD in History from New York University, and an MA and BA in History from The University of Rhode Island.