Dr. Nicole Stedman

Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

Dr. Nicole Stedman is Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School.

She is a three-time University of Florida alumna: Bachelor of Science in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences (1998), Master of Science in Agricultural Education and Communication (2001), and Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural Education and Communication, with an emphasis in leadership education (2004).

Her professional history includes developing leadership curricula for at-risk youth as a program specialist with the Eighth Judicial Circuit Office of the State Attorney Project Payback, three years of teaching as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, and 14 years of teaching, research, and administration at UF as a professor, associate chair of its Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, Faculty Senate chair, and Board of Trustees member.

As an active and publishing researcher, she has partnered in $3.2 million in funded grants and participated in international outreach to Belize, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Her teaching has garnered awards from UF (2010, 2013), the American Association for Agricultural Education (2018) and Southern Region (2013), the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Fellow (2011) and Scholar (2015), and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities Regional Excellence in College and University Teaching (2016).

Her scholarship, grounded in critical thinking pedagogy, has driven her collaborative work in developing models of Emotionally Engaged Thinking (EET), which promotes use of emotion as a catalyst for decision-making.

Executive Assistant to the Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

Lorna Dishman serves as the Executive Secretary, assisting the Associate Vice President & Dean, the Associate Dean, and the Assistant Dean of the Graduate School with the daily operations. She maintains each of their calendars and processes their domestic travel, in addition to handling international travel for the Dean’s office and Graduate School staff. She coordinates Graduate School-sponsored meetings, conferences, workshops, and receptions by preparing agendas and corresponding materials, distributing information, while organizing all scheduling and catering for these events. These duties include, but are not limited to, organizing Graduate Council meetings, Graduate Student Teaching Awards, Doctoral Dissertation Advising/Mentoring Awards, Graduate Student/TA orientations, and the Graduate Coordinators’ Workshop. Additionally, her duties include reconciling P-Card transactions and facilitating petitions in the Assistant Dean’s absence or when needed.