Following his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester, Dr. Graves joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Mississippi in 1984. He rose through the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor at the University of Mississippi and was awarded the title of Distinguished Faculty Fellow from the University of Mississippi College of Liberal Arts in 2001. In 2003, Dr. Graves was recruited to become the chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He served as chair of the department from May 2003 to July 2015.