USU History Department Names 2025 Norm Jones Faculty Fellow

LOGAN, Utah — Susan M. Cogan, associate professor in Utah State University’s Department of History, has been named the 2025 Norm Jones Faculty Fellow. Qualifying faculty must be tenured in history, religious studies, or classics and show excellence in the main area of their role statement with demonstrated performance in other areas. In essence, the individual must be an all-rounder who exemplifies the career of Professor Emeritus Norman Jones, for whom the award, which carries a $4,000 honorarium, is named.

Cogan is a scholar of early modern European history who has won fellowships from Cambridge University, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Huntington Library. Her 2021 book, “Catholic Social Networks in Early Modern England: Kinship, Gender, and Coexistence,” analyzes the intersections of gender and religion in early modern England and earned an Honorable Mention from the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies.

In terms of teaching, Cogan’s extensive work with undergraduates won her the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHaSS) Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year in 2022. She is also committed to student research, both undergraduate and graduate, and is currently the program director for the university’s Undergraduate Teaching Fellows Program.

Whether teaching an undergraduate methods course or a graduate seminar, Cogan receives consistently high marks and is known for seeking collaborative and creative ways to increase her educational impact. This includes leading several workshops for USU’s Special Collections and Archives on the subject of paleography — the study of ancient systems of writing — and collaborating with Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Matthew Milner for Nano-history, a network-mapping platform that facilitates visualizations of human networks of the past.

The committee of senior faculty appointed by the dean of CHaSS was particularly impressed with Cogan’s recent book publication and ongoing commitment to her research trajectory. Among her professional activities, Cogan is a regular reviewer for three academic presses and multiple scholarly publications, and she represents university faculty on USU’s Faculty Senate and serves on several department and college committees.

According to committee members who selected this year’s faculty fellow, “Dr. Cogan is the real thing — she excels in all three areas of research, teaching, and service, making her a clear choice for an award modeled on the career of Professor Norman Jones.”

In his career at USU, Jones was a distinguished historian, an award-winning teacher, and director of general education. As head of the History Department for 18 years, Jones oversaw the establishment of classics and religious studies programs at USU.

Previous winners of the Jones Fellowship have included Jamie Sanders (2020); Victoria Grieve (2021); Danielle Ross (2022); Julia Gossard (2023), and Susan Grayzel (2024).