The

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kn ...

in Lexington, Kentucky. It was founded by John Bryan Bowman in 1865 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky (A&M), a publicly charted department of Kentucky University (now called

Transylvania University Transylvania University is a private university in Lexington, Kentucky. It was founded in 1780 and was the first university in Kentucky. It offers 46 major programs, as well as dual-degree engineering programs, and is accredited by the Southern ...

), under the

Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or s ...

James Kennedy Patterson James Kennedy Patterson (March 26, 1833August 15, 1922) was an academic who served as the first president of the University of Kentucky. His family immigrated from Scotland to Indiana in 1842 when he was nine years old. He pursued what meager educ ...

, a professor at Kentucky University, became the first president of A&M in 1869. Nine years later, amid concerns about a private religious university receiving public land-grant funding, A&M split from Kentucky University and moved to its present campus in downtown Lexington. The institution was renamed State University, Lexington, Kentucky, upon reaching university status in 1908, and eight years later, was again renamed the University of Kentucky. Today, the university is the state's largest and its flagship. The office of the president is housed in the Main Building. Finished in 1882, the Main Building was one of the original three State College buildings. Patterson personally financed the construction of all three. Maxwell Place, an

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

located off Rose Street in the heart of campus, serves as the residence of the president. It was originally constructed for James Hillary Mulligan and his wife Mary in 1872, and was acquired by the university in 1917 after Mulligan's death. Frank L. McVey was the first president to reside at Maxwell Place. The president is the chief executive officer of the university. The president is appointed by the Board of Trustee and can only be removed "for incompetence, neglect of or refusal to perform duties, or for immoral conduct," and then only after notice and hearing. The president is the chair of the University Senate and an ''ex officio'' member of the Staff Senate. While the Board has delegated most administrative power to the President, it retains the right to approve certain major decisions, including the annual budget and establishing academic councils. In the event of a vacancy, the provost serves as president until the Board appoints an interim or new president. Twelve men have served as president of the University of Kentucky. Of those, five were graduates of the university or its predecessor institutions, and another attended without graduating.The five graduates were Herman Lee Donovan, Frank G. Dickey, A. D. Kirwan, Charles T. Wethington Jr., and Lee T. Todd Jr. The attendee was Henry Stites Barker. See their individual biographies, linked in the table above. A. D. Kirwan served only in an interim capacity, but was retroactively named the seventh president by the Board of Trustees. The twelfth and current president,

Eli Capilouto Eli Capilouto (born August 22, 1949, in Montgomery, Alabama) is the twelfth president of the University of Kentucky. He previously had been the provost of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Early life Capilouto is a native of Alab ...

, assumed the office in 2011.

Presidents

References

External links

University of Kentucky Office of the President
{{University of Kentucky Presidents of the University of Kentucky

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

University of Kentucky, presidents