# University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences is the liberal arts and sciences unit of the University of Kentucky, located in Lexington, Kentucky. It is organized into departments covering the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, offering more than thirty undergraduate and graduate degree programs.
The college is home to 5,200 undergraduate students, 960 graduate students, 50 postdoctoral students, and 350 faculty members. The College of Arts and Sciences features programs in Hispanic Studies, Human Geography, and Clinical Psychology.

## History of the college

The College of Arts and Science was established on April 14, 1908, by James K. Patterson, the first president of the University of Kentucky, as part of Patterson's initiative to create a college that would provide solid education in the sciences, arts, and humanities.
The Graduate School was formally established in 1912, and by 1919, UK was one of only 130 institutions in the United States whose graduate school had been accepted to the National Association of State Universities.
In 1918, President Frank McVey expanded the college from 13 departments to 22 and officially changed its name to the College of Arts and Sciences by adding the 's' to Sciences. McVey insisted on hiring faculty members with doctorates to make the university more competitive.
To accommodate the growing numbers of students during the 1931–32 academic year, U.K built several new buildings, including the Biological Sciences building, Erikson Hall (originally Home Economics Building), and an enlarged ROTC building.
In 1945, the College of Arts and Sciences began recognizing individual faculty members with the Distinguished Professor Award, the first of which was awarded to Grant Knight of the English Department. In 1947 also saw Paul G. Blazer and his wife Georgia launch the still-ongoing Blazer Lecture Series to showcase the talent of university faculty and other members of the academic community.
In 1958, Sociology major William Augustus Jones, Jr., and English minor Doris Wilkinson represented A&S in UK's first graduating class of African-Americans . Joseph Walter Scott, UK's first African-American professor, was hired by the Sociology Department in 1965. In 1967 Doris Wilkinson became the first African-American female professor.
In response to an increasingly tense political climate – the College of Arts and Sciences opened the Patterson School for Diplomacy.
The college's location on UK's campus was centralized by the construction of Patterson Office Tower. Completed in 1969, the Office Tower and adjacent Whitehall Classroom building gave the College of Arts and Sciences additional classrooms and office spaces.
In 1974, Judith Lesnaw became the first woman in Biology, and later became the first woman to receive tenure at the university.
William Nunn Lipscomb earned a bachelor's degree at Kentucky and completed his education and a distinguished academic career out-of-state. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies on borane structure and chemical bonding.
As academic interest in Appalachia grew during the 1970s, UK opened the Appalachian Center in 1977 and developed an academically acclaimed curriculum in Appalachian Studies.

## Departments

The College of Arts and Sciences features 18 traditional departments, offering majors leading to B.A., B.S., M.A., M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees.
* Anthropology
* Biology
* Chemistry
* Earth & Environmental Sciences
* Economics
* English
* Gender & Women's Studies
* Geography
* Hispanic Studies
* History
* Mathematics
* Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures
* Philosophy
* Physics & Astronomy
* Political Science
* Psychology
* Sociology
* Statistics

## Programs

In addition to its departments, the College of Arts and Sciences also houses 19 interdisciplinary programs and committees:
* Aerospace Studies/Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps
* Africana Studies
* American Studies
* Appalachian Studies
* Cognitive Science
* Environmental Studies
* Foreign Language and International Economics
* Indian Culture
* International Studies
* Islamic Studies
* Japan Studies
* Judaic Studies
* Latin American Studies
* Linguistics
* Mathematical Economics
* Military Science/Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps
* Social Theory
* Topical Studies
* Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies

## Faculty awards and grants

Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences have been awarded grants from such institutes as the National Science Foundation, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Drug Abuse, US Department of Education, and National Institutes of Health. Similarly, faculty members have received many national and international fellowships, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Humboldt Foundation.

## Research funding

Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences account for 60% of the researchers at the University of Kentucky. In addition to multiple grants and fellowships, the College of Arts and Sciences has $45 million in collaborate external grants and ranks first in the number of grad student publications among colleges at the university.

## Deans of the college

* Arthur M. Miller, 1908–1917
* Paul P. Boyd, 1917–1947
* Martin M. White, 1947–1965
* Paul Nagel, 1966–1969
* Wimberly Royster, 1969–1972
* Art Gallaher, 1972–1980
* Donald Sands (Acting Dean), 1980–1981
* Michael Baer, 1981–1990
* Bradley C. Canon (Acting Dean), 1990–1991
* Richard Edwards, 1991–1997
* Donald Sands (Acting Dean) 1997–1998
* Howard Grotch, 1998–2003
* Steven L. Hoch, 2003–2009
* Phil Harling (Acting Dean), 2008–2009
* Mark L. Kornbluh, 2009–2020
* Christian M. M. Brady, 2020–2022
* Ana M. Franco-Watkins 2022–present

## Publications

* Ampersand, the magazine of the College of Arts and Sciences, is published twice a year for alumni, faculty, and friends of the college.
* Limestone, a journal of art and literature edited and published annually by graduate students in the Department of English.
* disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory, an annual thematic publication of contemporary social theory produced by the Committee on Social Theory.