News

The start of the academic year has brought three UF faculty members into new roles as interim cognizant associated deans for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The appointments were announced recently by Interim Dean Mary Watt.

Sean Adams will oversee the college’s humanities departments, a scope that includes seven departments, eight centers and related programs. He also will be the college’s representative on contract negotiations with the United Faculty of Florida at UF, and be responsible for faculty salaries.

“All of those disciplines — philosophy, literature, language, religion, and of course my own field, history — serve as the core of a liberal arts education and have been part of the university curriculum for centuries. But in addition to that proud past, I think that studying the humanities offers ways to think about the future as well,” Adams said.

Adams received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999 and is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida. He teaches on the global history of energy, American capitalism, and 19th century U.S. history. Adams is the founder and director of the Inquire Capitalism program, which supports research on global capitalism and has several public-facing digital research projects on business history.

A specialist on the Industrial Revolution, Adams is the author of Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum American (Johns Hopkins, 2004), Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century (Johns Hopkins, 2014), and a three-volume anthology entitled The American Coal Industry, 1789 to 1902 (Routledge, 2013). He is the editor of The Early American Republic: A Documentary Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and The Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), as well as numerous articles, reviews, and book chapters. He is currently writing two books, one on the economic and historical value of land in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, as well as a survey of America’s Industrial Revolution.

“I have a keen interest in how disruptive change affected people living through it during the 19th century, which offers lessons for all of us struggling with, say, the implications of AI or the digitalization of our current world. The humanities faculty here in the college have some unique insights into those types of questions and are among the best poised on campus to address them,” Adams said.

Kevin Knudson will be the cognizant associate dean for seven departments, along with associated centers and programs in the natural sciences. He will be responsible for CLAS budget planning and faculty affairs such as promotions and tenure.

Kevin Knudson joined UF as director of the UF Honors Program and professor of mathematics in 2009. He served as chair of the Department of Mathematics from 2018 to 2024. During that time the department hired nearly 20 new faculty, grew the research enterprise, significantly expanded its outreach activities, and moved its lower-division courses to open-source materials, which have saved UF students more than $4 million.

Knudson completed his bachelor’s degree at Virginia Tech, graduating from the Honors Program, inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and was a member of the Corps of Cadets. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at Duke University in 1996 under the direction of Richard Hain and received a National Science Foundation Mathematical Sciences Research Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he used at Northwestern University. He held tenure-track positions at Wayne State University in Detroit and Mississippi State University before coming to UF. Knudson was named a CLAS Teacher of the Year in 2016 and was inducted into the UF Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars the same year. He has written more than 30 research articles and published three books in algebraic topology and related areas.

“After working in various administrative roles at UF for the last 15 years I am very excited to further broaden my skills in the CLAS Dean’s office,” Knudson said. “Interim Dean Watt has assembled an interesting group of people to manage the college and I look forward to working with them to advance the college’s mission of providing outstanding teaching, advancing research, and serving the people of Florida.”

Barbara Zsembik will be the cognizant associate dean for departments, centers and programs in social and political science.

Zsembik received her Ph.D. in sociology and demography from the University of Texas, Austin in 1988. At UF, she teaches and writes on health disparities in the United States, Latino issues and experiences, migration and health, and domestic violence in the Caribbean.

Zsembik received recognition as Provost Administrative Fellow in 2000, T. Lynn Smith Term Professor from 1999 to 2000, University Teacher of the Year in 1995, and twice received the William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award from McKnight Doctoral Fellow, State of Florida in 2008 and 2014.

Zsembik’s research focuses on unequal opportunities for health and risks of illness and disability. She works to bring the Latino experience in to the mainstream of social science and epidemiological studies of health disparities. Her research applies a life-course framework to the study of health and migration in Latin America and the U.S., with particular attention to childhood immunization, chronic disease epidemiology, and domestic violence.

She is working on determinants and consequences of violence, poverty, and structural racism in encampments of sugarcane workers in the Dominican Republic, and on racial and ethnic differences in preventive health care in the U.S.

Zsembik said she is honored to have the opportunity to serve as interim associate dean.

“The faculty administrators and staff in the college office are experienced, generous, and committed to serving students and faculty,” she said, adding, “My goal is to assist department chairs and center directors to lead and develop strong, relevant, and vibrant research, teaching, and outreach programs.”

Noting the changing nature of higher education in the U.S., Zsembik said, “An on-going challenge here at UF is understanding and implementing a revised general education curriculum. My experience as a long-time chair of two social science programs housed in the same department — sociology and criminology — is useful in guiding the increased complexity and demands for adaptability and innovation required in higher education.”

Specific areas of responsibility are: 

Sean Adams, Interim Cognizant Associate Dean for:   

Department of Classics    

Department of English    

Department of History    

Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures    

Department of Philosophy    

Department of Religion    

Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies    

Center for Children’s Literature and Culture    

Center for Film and Media Studies    

Center for Greek Studies    

Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere   

Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies    

Center for Modern German Studies    

Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions    

France-Florida Research Institute    

Global Islamic Studies   

Institute for the Psychological Study of the Arts   

Program in Creative Writing   

Samuel Proctor Oral History Program   

University Writing Program    

William and Grace Dial for Written and Oral Communication   

Areas of responsibility include:  

Faculty affairs  

College representative to UF-UFF contract negotiations    

Faculty grievances   

Faculty salaries/raises/market equity/bylaws    

Sexual harassment   

Undergraduate student academic complaints and concerns   

Unit bylaws   

Honorifics   

Humanities Endowed Scholarship Fund   

Kevin Knudson, Interim Cognizant Associate Dean for:   

Department of Astronomy    

Department of Biology    

Department of Chemistry    

Department of Geological Sciences    

Department of Mathematics    

Department of Physics    

Department of Statistics    

Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research    

Center for Applied Mathematics    

Center for Applied Optimization   

Center for Catalysis    

Center for Chemical Physics    

Center for Chemical Research at the Bio/Nano Interface   

Center for Nanostructured Electronic Materials   

Center for Condensed Matter Sciences    

Center for Macromolecular Science and Engineering    

Florida Center for Heterocyclic Compounds    

Institute for Fundamental Theory    

Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics (IHEPA)    

Quantum Theory Project    

UF Marine Laboratory at Seahorse Key    

Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience   

Areas of responsibility include:  

Distance learning initiatives   

Faculty Assessment   

Annual evaluation letters and AARs of untenured faculty   

Distinguished professors   

Tenure and promotion   

Third-year review   

Outside activities and conflict of interest   

Shared Languages Program   

CLAS budget (excepting grants)   

Sabbaticals    

Barb Zsembik, Interim Cognizant Associate Dean for:  

Academic Resources (formerly, Teaching Center)   

African American Studies Program   

Bob Graham Center for Public Service   

Bureau of Economic and Business Research   

Center for African Studies   

Center for European Studies   

Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies    

Department of Anthropology   

Department of Economics   

Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies   

Department of Geography   

Department of Linguistics   

Department of Political Science   

Department of Psychology   

Department of Sociology, Criminology & Law   

English Language Institute   

International Studies Program   

Land Use and Environmental Change Institute   

Sustainability Studies Program