Dr. Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith was named the ninth president of Fort Valley State University, June 21 by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.

Prior to Fort Valley, Griffith served as the provost at York College since 2007. During his tenure at York, Griffith was credited for increasing the number of full-time faculty by 30 percent, reorganizing the academic division and enhancing the research and scholarly climate. Griffith also introduced an undergraduate student research program.

Griffith's most prominent experiences include serving as a tenured professor of political science; provost at Radford University in Radford, Va.; budget dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida International University in Miami; dean of the FIU Honors College, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the Royal Military College of Canada and the George Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

He is also known to be a specialist on Caribbean security, drugs and crime. In this regard, he has served as a consultant to Canada's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other organizations.

Griffith also serves on the editorial board of the journal Security and Defense Studies Review.

Griffith earned a bachelor of social sciences degree from the University of Guyana, a master of Arts degree in political science and public administration from Long Island University, New York, and a master of philosophy and doctorate in political science from the City University of New York.

He is also a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's educational leadership program.