Sullivan-González has served as Dean of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College since 2003 and is Professor of History in the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History. He is the author of two books, The Black Christ of Esquipulas: Religion and Identity in Guatemala (2016) and Piety, Power, and Politics: Religion and Nation Formation in Guatemala, 1821-1871 (1998). Sullivan-González also translated Edelberto Torres-Rivas’s Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano as History and Society in Central America (1993) and co-edited a manuscript with Charles Reagan Wilson on The South and the Caribbean (2001). He was chosen as the Outstanding Teacher for the Department of Liberal Arts in 2001.
Sullivan-González completed his Bachelor of Arts with Honors at Samford University and his Master of Divinity and Master of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He taught Church History and Social Ethics from 1984-1986 at the Nicaraguan Baptist Seminary in Managua, Nicaragua, and completed his Phd in Latin American History at The University of Texas at Austin. He initiated his teaching career at UM as Assistant Professor in 1993, and then taught at Tulane University as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History from 1999-2000.
The SMBHC has grown from 375 Honors students to more than 1500 under Sullivan-González and he has raised with three Chancellors more than $29 million in private funding for the SMBHC. A $6.6 million addition to the SMBHC building was completed in 2016 that doubled the square footage for classrooms and public space for student conversation and intense study.
Sullivan-González volunteers with the Lafayette County Fire Department and is a novice beekeeper in his spare time.
In February 2021, Sullivan-González announced that he would be stepping down as SMBHC dean on August 15, 2021. He will continue teaching in the department of history.
