Ivelaw Griffith installed as UG’s 10th VC

Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith was officially installed as the tenth Vice-Chancellor of University of Guyana.

The Investiture of Professor Griffith will formally grant him the authority and symbols of high office.

June 14, 2017, was the one-year anniversary of Professor Griffith’s selection as the University’s Vice-Chancellor and Principal.

This historic ceremony, the first of its kind for a Vice-Chancellor at the University of Guyana, will involve a procession with faculty attired in academic regalia and the conferring of the official powers and responsibilities of the office to Professor Griffith by the Chancellor of UG Professor Nigel Harris.

Professor Griffith had explained that the officially swearing ceremony takes place one year after the Vice Chancellor’s appointment to allow him an opportunity to prove that he is capable of performing in that capacity.

Professor Griffith had expressed confidence that he has achieved a lot within his one year tenure.

Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith was appointed the Tenth Principal and Vice Chancellor of The University
of Guyana in June 2016, having served earlier as Executive-in-Residence at The University at Albany,
State University of New York, and the Ninth President of Fort Valley State University in Georgia, where
he led the right-sizing of the educational and economic enterprise, focusing on growing enrollment,
enhancing the academic profile, controlling spending, launching Honors and Undergraduate Research
programs, and initiating a feasibility study to establish a School of Entrepreneurship and Business
Innovation.
A tenured professor of political science, he served from 2007 to 2013 provost and senior vice president at
York College in New York where notable achievements included growing the full-time faculty by 30
percent, re-organizing Academic Affairs into Schools of Business and Information Systems, Arts &
Sciences, and Health Sciences and Professional Programs, and enhancing research and scholarship by
creating the Provost Lectures, the Distinguished Scholars Lectures, and the Undergraduate Research
Program. He also established Discovery to celebrate and incentivize faculty excellence in research and
service. Earlier, he was provost at Radford University in Virginia, budget dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences at Florida International University (FIU), and dean of The Honors College at FIU, all while
holding his professorship.

A UG alumnus, he was the first person to graduate with distinction in political science. He also holds a
Master of Arts from Long Island University, New York, and both a Master of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in
Political Science from The City University of New York Graduate School. As well, he graduated from the
Harvard Graduate School of Education’s program in educational leadership. An expert on Caribbean and
hemispheric security, drugs and crime, he originated the concept called Geonarcotics in the early 1990s as
a way to study the complex relationship involving drugs, geography, power and politics, outlining it first
in Canada’s leading international affairs scholarly magazine: “From Cold War Geopolitics to Post-Cold
War Geonarcotics,” International Journal Vol. 49 (Winter) 1993-94, 1-36.