Bob Sommer, UC Davis’ own Jimmy Carter of department chair diplomacy, is stepping down from his most recent post after 2 1/2 years of ministering to the organizational needs of the art faculty and staff. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to retire.

He has chaired four departments over the past 13 years: psychology, environmental design, rhetoric and communication, and art, rather disparate disciplines that one might think unconnected unless you knew of Sommer’s newest fantasy: chairing the Department of Nematology. "I’ve never seen a nematode, but I’d like to prove that being a chair is a generic role -- it’s the liberal-arts model of administration," he says.

"Being a chair has become my long-term racket: making the world better through moving chairs around. But Emily Post knew that long before I said it."

At age 71, Sommer can boast having passed up three golden handshakes. He’s taking a sabbatical this next quarter to work on his newest interest: art of the mentally ill. "It’s clearly a sublimation of my work here in art," he says.

Sommer is an environmental psychologist who arrived at UC Davis in 1963 after making a name for his work in mental-hospital reform. Since then he has studied and advocated the results of his research on more humane prisons, urban trees, farmers’ markets, cooperatives, "the soft classroom" and bike paths, to name just a few of his global interests. He met his wife, Barbara, a longtime psychology lecturer on campus, while riding a bike in Davis.

A man for all seasons, this mushroom hobbyist, gardener, painter and former snail farmer says he remains true to the goal he set for himself in college.

"When I was an undergraduate, World War II had just ended and we had had the atom bomb and the Holocaust and a lot of other terrible things," Sommer says. "I decided to make this world a better place. I felt the problems were in human relations and I still do."

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Hiking in the Sierra. It’s like climbing to the rooftop of the world through a floral rock garden. I love reaching the summit with a 360-degree view and having no sign of human habitation. You get up there and you can’t see roads, you can’t see houses, you can’t see any sign of human habitation.

Your idea of utter misery?

Being stuck in a windowless room reading 200 essay answers to the same dull questions; grading papers using percentages with a narrow range -- you know, when they’re all between 20 and 25 points.

Your greatest extravagance?

Self-publishing a booklet about the struggle to save the Stanislaus River. We did everything: layout, paste-up, I did all the photographs. We ended up with cartons of unsold books in the garage. It was a really nice experience, but we decided we weren’t sales people.

The living person you most admire?

Jack Kevorkian, who repeatedly puts himself on the line for a good cause: death with dignity. I really like the idea that he takes responsibility for his actions.

Your philosophy of life?

The best baseball player averages only one hit in three times at bat but still keeps on going to the plate to try to hit the ball. It’s because most of the things that I do don’t pan out. When I heard that the best baseball player only hits .333 -- that’s a good batting average -- it gave me confidence that even if most things don’t pan out, when you get occasional successes, that’s terrific. The prison work I did I don’t consider a success. I spent at least 10 years on it.

Something you’d never do?

Eat beets or rutabaga. Nobody likes them.

What character in popular culture are you most similar to and why?

Woody Allen: We look alike, both of us come from New York City, have a similar type of warped humor, dwell on introspection, and share interests in philosophy and psychology. But he’s more neurotic than I am.

What’s something about you people would be surprised to know?

I am very shy, almost to the point of having a social phobia. People who hear me lecture to large audiences would have a difficult time believing this. I work very well on a one-to-one basis. In small groups, I’m not that comfortable or effective. I do much better in a large lecture class than in a small class.

What’s your pet peeve?

People who miss my best lines and who take me seriously because I look like a serious person. I’ve always looked like a serious person. I had a friend who was Bolivian who was a much more serious person than I was. He would carry around this stack of books and no one would consider him seriously. For me, no matter what I do, people regard me as serious. My mother made a distinction between funny-ha ha and funny-peculiar and my humor is in the latter category.

What do you do when you are bored?

Go out into the garden -- there is always something that needs to be done. I always find some new weed, some new insect, something that needs to be watered, pruned or tied up.

If you could pass a universal law for the campus, what would it be?

Rotate people into different jobs. Get someone from Information Technology working in the ceramics studio and station a physicist in the English department. Shake things up. Put the universal back into university. I find that has really helped me stay young. If I had to hang around Young Hall [home of the psychology department] for 37 years I’d feel like I was shuffling down the hall in slippers. I’m not going to retire -- not at least in the next year. I passed up three golden handshakes because I felt there was some opportunity to give back to the university. I really appreciate them letting me get away with it all these years.