This Monday (July 1), Dr. Clyde Milner will assume his duties as director of the Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program and professor of history at Arkansas State University.

Dr. Milner succeeds Dr. Brady Banta, archivist, who served as interim director during the past academic year.

Chosen through a rigorous national search process, Milner became the search committee’s first choice because of his interdisciplinary background, regional focus, exemplary academic credentials, and administrative experience.

A native of North Carolina, Milner earned his Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University in 1979. He comes to ASU from Utah State University where he was professor of history and executive editor of the Western Historical Quarterly.

From 1997 to 2000, he also directed the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies and was executive director of the American Studies Program.

According to a spokesman for the College of Arts and Sciences, the doctoral program in heritage studies utilizes multiple academic perspectives within a laboratory of the Mississippi River Delta. The goal is to develop heritage professionals who identify, preserve, interpret, manage, and promote regional history and culture for non-specialist public audiences.

Graduates of the program will qualify for senior positions in cultural and historical agencies, cultural and historic tourism, museums and archives, parks and historic sites, and consulting firms and heritage-related businesses.

Milner is author or editor of seven books, including A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West (1996) and many scholarly articles. He is helping plan an online Encyclopedia of American History to be published by the Organization of American Historians and Oxford University Press.

His wife is Dr. Carol O’Connor, who will also become a professor of history at ASU in the fall. They have two children, one grown daughter and a son, Charlie, who will attend Jonesboro High School.

# # #