ALPINE Sul Ross State University has announced that Robert Kinucan will become the next executive vice president and provost of the University. He will take that office on July 1.
The University, assisted by Academic Search, an executive search firm dedicated to serving higher education institutions, engaged in a comprehensive national search that resulted in the selection of Kinucan. The search committee included faculty, staff, and students from the Alpine, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, and Uvalde campuses of Sul Ross State University.
Kinucan has devoted most of his professional career to Sul Ross, rising through the academic ranks to become a tenured full professor and through the administrative ranks as a division director, dean, associate provost, and soon provost. He currently serves as associate provost for graduate studies and research, and as professor of natural resource management.
Kinucan graduated from Texas A&M University with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in his field of rangeland ecology. He earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Wyoming in the same field, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Idaho in range resources.
His service at Sul Ross includes more than three decades of teaching and research and more than 20 years of administrative accomplishment, with a record of innovative and progressive program leadership.
He has held leadership positions for professional organizations at both the state and national levels. Among his many current and recent affiliations are the Agricultural Consortium of Texas, on which he served as president; the Texas Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources, on which he served as associate editor; and the Borderlands Research Institute, the research and outreach complement to the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, of which he is a co-founding member, guide, and participant.
Kinucan has remained an active classroom teacher throughout his academic and administrative career and has taught 138 sections of 35 course titles at several institutions. He has chaired graduate committees for many students; advised students and sponsored student organizations; served on and chaired many university councils, committees and task forces; engaged in scholarly research; published peer reviewed manuscripts; and regularly secured extramural funding.
Among Kinucan’s many accomplishments at Sul Ross, he conceptualized and led the effort to transform the Division of Range Animal Science into the College of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, creating the Department of Animal Science and Department of Natural Resource Management. He promoted clubs and organizations as an important component of the broader educational experience and as a mechanism to enhance students’ sense of inclusion and support retention. He facilitated creation of an online non-thesis Master of Agriculture degree in animal science and Master of Agriculture degree in natural resource management, curricula that continue to increase enrollment and extend quality offerings to a broader audience of Sul Ross students. He has developed and led international studies classes to Honduras, the Republic of South Africa and the Republic of Botswana.
