Interim Chancellor Jan Simek

In 2008, Dr. Jan Simek accepted the position of Interim Chancellor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. An anthropologist with an M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton, he has been at the University of Tennessee since 1984.

Throughout his career, Dr. Simek has focused on ancient human use of caves for habitation, exploration, and religion. His research interests include quantitative and spatial analysis, paleolithic archaeology and Old World prehistory. He has received some 35 grants, has 85 publications to his credit, and since 1981 has presented more than 100 papers and lectures here and abroad.

Since 1976, he has worked in France studying the relationships between Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens between 100,000 and 25,000 years ago. In addition to his fieldwork, Dr. Simek has been a research associate since 1979 and a visiting professor in archaeology at the Institute de Quaternaire, University of Bordeaux I in France. In 1989, Dr. Simek became an elected member of the Commission 8 on the Upper Paleolithic of Europe, International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences. In 1991, he was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, in Spain.

In 1995, Dr. Simek became interested in prehistoric cave use in Tennessee and throughout the South, and since that year has documented more than 50 prehistoric cave art sites in the region, representing the first cave art tradition ever discovered in North America. He also located numerous other cave sites used for burial, ritual, and mineral mining by Tennessee’s prehistoric inhabitants. His work in Tennessee caves has received support from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). He was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation for Valuable Service to our National Heritage in 1996 by the TVA.

At the University of Tennessee, Dr. Simek has served as head of the Anthropology Department, interim director of the School of Art, interim dean of the College of Architecture and Design, and chief of staff to the Chancellor. In 2001, Dr. Simek was named Distinguished Professor of Science, one of only four in the College of Arts and Sciences.