Past Deans

Nancy M. Cox
2014-2024

Nancy M. Cox was appointed as the 11th dean of the University of Kentucky’s Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment—and the first female dean in the college’s history—in January 2014. In 2020, she was additionally named as the University of Kentucky’s first vice president for land-grant engagement.

Cox’s distinguished career at the University of Kentucky began in 2001, when she joined the college as associate dean of research. Under her leadership, the college made landmark investments in support of Kentucky’s signature equine and distilled spirits industries, established strategic partnerships with government and industry stakeholders to leverage the college’s reach and resources in service of the Commonwealth and initiated nearly $500 million in new facilities and capital improvement projects.

In 2017, she oversaw a comprehensive review of the Cooperative Extension Service, which strengthened the agency’s organizational structure, fiscal management policies and county-focused programming to address the changing needs of Kentucky communities. Cox also guided the college’s historic partnership with Beam Suntory in 2019 to create the James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits, and she headed the establishment of the Grain and Forage Center of Excellence at the UK Research and Education Center at Princeton.

M. Scott Smith 
2001-2013

M. Scott Smith began his career at UK in 1978 as an agronomy researcher whose field of expertise was nitrogen in soils. He served as chair of the agronomy department and later as associate dean for research before being appointed as dean. He also served as interim provost for the University of Kentucky from 2005 to 2006.

During the first few months of his tenure, Kentucky’s Thoroughbred industry faced devastating losses from what was later identified as Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome. Under Smith’s leadership, the college rose to the challenge in identifying the cause of the problem (the accidental ingestion of Eastern tent caterpillars by pregnant mares) and helped to solve the crisis.

As dean, Smith oversaw implementation of several new degree programs, including the Ag Equine program, and he also led efforts to update and expand the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory during his tenure. After retiring from UK, Smith, a longtime Arboretum supporter, was named as the Arboretum’s acting director in 2024.

C. Oran Little
1988-2000

A nationally distinguished animal nutrition researcher, C. Oran Little served as dean from 1988 to 2000. Little began at UK in 1960 and progressed through the ranks to full professor in 1967. From 1969 to 1985, Little served as associate dean for research and associate director of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. He left the Bluegrass in 1985 for a position as vice chancellor of research at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center and director of the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station, but he returned to Kentucky in 1988 to take the helm as dean.

Early in his administration, he prioritized finding a replacement for Coldstream Farm and developing a cutting-edge research and education facility. Little led successful efforts to convince decision-makers and the public of the need and tremendous opportunity for a new research farm, uniting statewide agricultural leadership in support of this initiative. In 2010, the UK Board of Trustees approved naming the 1,500-acre farm in Woodford County the C. Oran Little Research Center.

Charles E. Barnhart
1969-1988

Charles E. Barnhart’s service to the College of Agriculture began in 1948 as an instructor in animal husbandry. Prior to becoming dean, he rose through the ranks as associate dean for research and associate director of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station.

"He firmly believed in the land-grant university philosophy that defined the university as a place of knowledge and opportunity for all citizens of the Commonwealth,” said Charles Wethington, Jr., former UK president, of Barnhart. “He often emphasized that the College of Agriculture belongs to the farmers and people of this state and is operated for them and their benefit.”

Barnhart’s tenure as dean marked a period of tremendous growth and development for the college and significant achievement in the containment of equine diseases, the advancement of forage research for the beef industry and the refinement of no-tillage cropping systems. The Cooperative Extension Service was restructured to encourage better communication with clients. Facilities were modernized and expanded, including construction of the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center and the University of Kentucky Research and Education Center at Princeton. The agricultural engineering building, which was under construction when Barnhart retired, was renamed the Charles E. Barnhart Building in his honor in 2001.

William A. Seay
1963-1969

William A. Seay was raised in Hickman County, Kentucky, and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky. He served as an infantry unit commander and staff officer during World War II. After earning his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, he returned to UK in 1954 as an associate professor in the agronomy department. Prior to becoming dean, he served as professor of soils, vice director of the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station and acting dean for two years.

During Seay’s tenure, the college experienced notable increases in research activities, student enrollment and physical facilities. The Cooperative Extension Service expanded and broadened its responsibilities to include emphasis on urban issues and total development of Kentucky’s resources, in addition to its continued focus on agriculture and home economics. Seay was instrumental in the establishment of the National Tobacco Research Laboratory at UK, and the college dedicated the Agricultural Science Center during his administration. He also headed up efforts to expand the Robinson Center for Appalachian Resource Sustainability in Quicksand, Kentucky, with the establishment of the Wood Utilization Center, the acquisition of more land and the addition of new research.

Seay, an avid pilot, died in a plane crash in February of 1969.

Frank James Welch 
1951-1963

Frank James Welch, a native of Texas who grew up on a farm in Mississippi, was appointed as dean in 1951, following the retirement of the college’s longest serving dean, Thomas Poe Cooper. Welch, who earned his doctorate in agricultural economics, had previously served as dean of the School of Agriculture at Mississippi State College.

Welch was widely known to be a polished and skillful administrator. Charles Barnhart, who later served as dean himself, said Welch built a strong base of farmer support in Kentucky by traveling throughout the state during his tenure, describing him as “a most likable, unflappable person who was at home in any situation.”

As dean, Welch led the way in the establishment of Eden Shale Farm in Owenton, Kentucky. He also oversaw construction of the Agricultural Sciences Center as a state-of-the-art plant and animal science laboratory on the UK campus, which elevated the college’s status nationally. Welch served on the board of directors for the Tennessee Valley Authority during his tenure as dean, from 1957 to 1959, and as assistant secretary of agriculture for federal-state relations in 1961 and 1962. 

Thomas Poe Cooper
1917-1951 

Thomas Poe Cooper was the longest serving dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station, with a tenure that stretched from 1917 to 1951. Prior to his appointment in Kentucky, he had served as director of the North Dakota Agriculture Experiment Station.

He was appointed to lead the UK College of Agriculture at a difficult time, roughly nine months after the United States entered World War I. He grew to become one of the best-known and most widely respected leaders among directors and deans of land-grant institutions during his tenure. Cooper negotiated the transfer of roughly 15,000 acres of land in Eastern Kentucky for the creation of the Robinson Sub-Experiment Station, dedicated in 1925. He also oversaw the formation of the West Kentucky Sub-Experiment Station in Princeton, Kentucky, shortly thereafter, significantly expanding UK’s engagement across the state.

He concurrently served the U.S. Department of Agriculture as chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics for nine months in 1925 and also served as acting president of the University of Kentucky from 1940 to 1941.

Shortly before his retirement, an editorial in the Lexington Leader lauded his more than three decades of service at UK as monumental: “Conservation of the soil and new and better methods of cultivation, along with studies on plant diseases and their control, important as these have been, have been exceeded in value by the thorough training of young men and women in the methods and economics of modern agriculture. … His personality, his capacity for leadership, his rare ability to make friends and draw men to him, have been powerful elements in the solution of the many problems affecting the lives and fortunes of the people of this state.”

George Roberts 
1916-1917

In 1916, as Dean Joseph Hoeing Kastle’s health declined, George Roberts was appointed to take up the helm as “Dean pro tem” by the college’s Executive Committee. Roberts provided valuable guidance and leadership during a difficult transitionary time, as the college experienced the loss of two deans in five years.

Roberts graduated from the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Kentucky in 1899, and he earned his master’s degree in chemistry in 1901. He was hired as an assistant chemist for the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station shortly thereafter, working in the newly organized division for the inspection and analysis of commercial fertilizers.

In 1908, he joined the College of Agriculture as a professor of agronomy, in addition to continuing his duties for the Experiment Station. He published the landmark bulletin No. 140 on fertilizers, which served as the basis for soil fertility programs across Kentucky until new technologies were developed in the mid-1900s.

Following the appointment of Thomas Poe Cooper to fill the role of dean in 1917, Roberts became assistant dean for the college, and he served as the head of agronomy until his retirement in 1944.

Joseph Hoeing Kastle
1912-1916

Joseph Hoeing Kastle was named as dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station in 1912. A native of Kentucky, Kastle previously served for four years as the chief of the Division of Chemistry of the U.S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service and for two years as the head of the University of Virginia’s Department of Chemistry. He returned to Kentucky in 1911 to lead the Experiment Station’s Department of Chemical Research.

In its recommendation of Kastle for the position as dean and director, a joint conference of leaders from both the Experiment Station and the college described him as “a scientist of depth, accomplishment and reputation.”

During Kastle’s four-year tenure, the college and the Experiment Station experienced vibrant growth, with increasing enrollment, a completed second-wing expansion of the Experiment Station Building and a growing portfolio of state regulatory and research responsibilities.

Kastle oversaw expansion of the Extension Division and the acquisition of outlying soil fields to enable soil research across the state. He also directed some of the Experiment Station’s first forays into animal science, including early research on beef cattle, sheep and poultry.

Melville Amasa Scovell
1910-1912

In 1885, Melville Amasa Scovell was appointed as the first director of the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station. Melville previously worked as a U.S. agent for the Department of Agriculture. He was the Experiment Station’s first—and at the time, its only—full-time employee­. Scovell would also become the college’s dean in 1910.

Over the span of his tenure as both Experiment Station director and then dean of the college, the combined staffing grew from three to 60, the number of departments increased from two to 11, and the agricultural experiment farm expanded to 240 acres, encompassing land that would become much of the modern footprint of the University of Kentucky’s main campus.

In a notice of his death, the Louisville Courier-Journal called Scovell “one of the most influential and popular citizens of Kentucky.” In an “In Memoriam” statement for the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, Harrison Garman wrote of Scovell, “His lifework may be said to have consisted in putting the Kentucky Experiment Station on a secure and ample foundation.”