Alumni Story

Musing about how her experience at Catawba has helped her in the years since graduation:

I think an important aspect of college itself is that you go and learn and gain life skills, information literacy, knowledge on how to live independently, not just skills to get a job.”

Ginny Summey “declared her major” at the tender age of about seven. “I’ve always loved politics! I was obsessed with the Bush-Dukakis race in ’88. I went around with a notebook and polled the little town we were living in then, wanting my polling results to be proven.”

Growing up, Ginny’s family moved around; her father was a United Methodist minister. She went to East Rowan High School, on to North Carolina State for a semester, before transferring to Catawba. She knew she wanted a smaller school with opportunities to interact with professors. She found that here.

When Ginny was a student, Catawba’s Political Science program featured Dr. Sandy Silverburg and Dr. Michael Bitzer among its faculty. They were “an amazing combination, I was challenged and pushed.” Ginny remains in touch with both professors regularly. (Dr. Silverburg is now faculty emeritus.)

Along with her work-study job at the library, football games, McCorkle’s (the student café), and time with friends are favorite Catawba memories. “A lot of our lives as students were spent hanging out with one another.”

One do-over wish for her time at Catawba: “I’d step out of my comfort zone more. I’d run for student body, try more things, have been more involved and had a richer experience.”

In spring of 2022, her book “The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism Within the Courts” was published, about the first African-American woman to practice law in North Carolina and first to become an elected district court judge. Ginny is currently delving into another topic in North Carolina’s history, which may become her next book.

Ginny earned her PhD at UNC-Greensboro. She recently left her faculty position teaching history there to work full-time for a consulting firm she co-founded, The Source Historical Consulting. The firm provides contract historical research for organizations such as non-profits, law firms, and government entities. The work also involves grant writing and a lot of requests for proposals, Ginny explains, as well as networking with fellow historians.

“I didn’t go into being a historian to make money. All of those things I learned at Catawba, including from Dr. Silverburg, who wasn’t afraid to hurt my feelings to make me a better person and a better scholar outside of Catawba!”

Fittingly for a historian, Ginny lives in Winston-Salem, NC near Old Salem, which she and her family enjoy exploring together.