Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs
Thomas F. Armstrong
Dr. Armstrong came to LSU Alexandria in January 2005. The move to LSU Alexandria underscored a career long commitment to assisting in the transformation of regional higher education. Dr. Armstrong’s career has focused on smaller, rapidly changing regional institutions which have developed through careful attention to quality curriculum, attention to student services which increase student success, and attention to the needs of the communities served by those regional institutions. That career includes work in Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee before coming to Louisiana. Dr. Armstrong grew up in Iowa and Colorado and earned his BA and MA from the University of Colorado-Boulder and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia.
With more than 33 years of experience in higher education, Dr. Armstrong’s career has included substantial classroom experience as a faculty member at Georgia College, now Georgia College and State University, in Milledgeville, Georgia. That experience has also included service as Assistant Dean and then Dean of Arts and Sciences at Georgia College and State University. Dr. Armstrong was named provost at Francis Marion University in 1993 and then became Provost and Senior Vice President and Professor of History at Texas Wesleyan University in 1995; he served as President of Tennessee Wesleyan College in 2003 and 2004.
Dr. Armstrong has published more than 35 essays, book chapters or encyclopedia contributions while also contributing more than 200 book reviews to various scholarly journals. He continues service on the Advisory Board for the journal Teaching History. He is active in professional organizations having served as president of the Georgia Association of Historians, secretary to the board of the Georgia Humanities Council and on the Board of Curators for the Georgia Historical Society. He is also active in the work of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools having chaired some 25 visiting teams and having made presentations to each of the last several annual meetings. In 1999, Dr. Armstrong chaired the program committee for the annual meeting. Dr. Armstrong received the prestigious “Meritorious Service Award” from the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 2007. In Louisiana, Vice Chancellor Armstrong is working closely with the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Louisiana Board of Regents on a number of initiatives for the benefit of Central Louisiana.
Throughout his career, Thomas Armstrong has been active in civic endeavors having served as president of Milledgeville Historic Preservation Commission, chairman of the board of the Friends of the Library and the Mary Vinson Memorial Library Board, president of the Milledgeville/Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce and in a number of other roles. He continued an active civic life in Fort Worth where he worked with the Chamber of Commerce, the Longhorn Council of the Boy Scouts, Shakespeare in the Park, the Allied Theatre Group, the Friends of the Library, Leadership Fort Worth and the Rotary Club. Dr. Armstrong worked with the city of Fort Worth on a comprehensive city plan and also worked with a number of not-for-profit organizations on issues of strategic and long-range planning.
In Alexandria, Dr. Armstrong is secretary to the Board of Directors of the Rapides Symphony Orchestra, president of the Arts Council of Central Louisiana, on the executive committee and chair of the education committee of the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce, on the Board of Managers for the Alexandria Museum of Art and an active member of the Downtown Alexandria Rotary Club where he will be president-elect in 2008-2009. Dr. Armstrong was recently elected to a term on the Board of the Rapides Regional Medical Center.
Dr. Armstrong and his wife, Dr. Janice Fennell Armstrong, are active in the Methodist Church, she in the Maggie Valley [North Carolina) United Methodist Church and he in First United Methodist of Alexandria. Of a typical Sunday morning, Dr. Armstrong can be found making a “joyful” noise in the chancel choir. The Armstrongs have one daughter, Shannon Plattner, who, with her husband, lives in Davidson, North Carolina. Shannon and Karl Plattner have two sons, Jacob and Colby.
Revised: December, 2007