Kent Holsinger

In his role as Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of The Graduate School, Kent Holsinger oversees all aspects of graduate and postdoctoral education at the University of Connecticut. In collaboration with schools and colleges he coordinates recruitment of graduate students and the award of departmentally-based graduate fellowships. He also works closely with deans, department heads, and directors when they are developing or revising graduate degree and certificate programs. He serves as Chair, ex officio, of the Executive Committee of The Graduate School, and he serves as the primary administrative liaison to and an ex officio member of the Graduate Faculty Council. He oversees activities within The Graduate School designed to support development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, and he serves as the primary academic liaison for interpretation of collective bargaining agreements governing the University’s relationships with graduate assistants and postdoctoral research associates.

Prior to joining the University of Connecticut, Holsinger was a postdoctoral fellow in the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley and a research scientist at the University of California, Davis and at Stanford University before joining the faculty at UConn. His research has encompassed a wide range of issues in plant evolutionary genetics, plant ecology, and conservation biology, and his co-edited book Genetics and Conservation of Rare Plants (Oxford, 1991) is regarded as a landmark in plant conservation. He is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles on topics including the evolution of plant reproductive systems, statistical techniques for analysis of genetic variation in geographically structured populations, diversification of plants in the Cape Floristic Region of southwestern South Africa, and the use of DNA sequences for inferring the evolutionary history of organisms. He is an elected Fellow of the American Advancement of Science and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and he received the Centennial Award from the Botanical Society of America. In addition to serving as Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of The Graduate School, he is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

He has served in leadership roles for a variety of professional societies, including as President of the American Genetic Association, the Botanical Society of America, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Since 2000, he has also served as Board Chair for BioOne, a non-profit organization providing open access and low-cost library access to scholarly journals in organismal and environmental biology.

Holsinger earned his B.S. from the College of Idaho and his Ph.D. at Stanford University.