Gary Kiger
The Utah State University press office reports that Gary Kiger, former dean of Utah State University’s College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, died Monday, Aug. 11, in Salt Lake City at University Hospital.
“Utah State University is greatly saddened by this news,” USU President Stan Albrecht said. “The Utah State University family has lost a valued and much-loved member. Gary’s accomplishments were many, and he will be missed. Our thoughts and condolences are with his family.”
Kiger, along with three other graduate students, was the founder of the Society for Disability Studies (SDS). In the late 1970s, he was one of four University of Colorado sociology graduate students who were working on projects on disability topics and decided to create a session presenting their research at the 1980 Western Social Science Association (WSSA) meeting.
From that session, others interested in disability research joined with the original four and in 1982, the group became a section within WSSA and called themselves the Section for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment and Disability (SSCIID).
In 1986, SSCIID decided to become a separate organization and began the transition to become SDS. SDS held the first of its independent annual meetings in Washington, D.C., in 1988.
