Friday, June 12, 2015

Ray Belton named new chancellor and president of Southern U.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana -- Ray Belton will be the new president and chancellor of Southern University, overseeing both the Baton Rouge campus and the overall Southern system, the system's Board of Supervisors determined Friday (June 12).

Belton, who currently serves as chancellor of Southern's Shreveport campus, will be tasked with navigating a new position, as the combined president-chancellor job was only just created. He'll also have to work to breathe new life into an institution that has faced declining enrollment and funding, low graduation and retention rates, and the challenge of finding continued relevance for historically black colleges and universities in a changing world.

The board voted 13-1 to hire Belton over Ivory Toldson, who began his career as an assistant professor at Southern and now works in Washington, D.C. as deputy director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The roles of both chancellor and president were vacant because the board opted not to renew the contracts of both system president Ronald Mason Jr. and former chancellor James Llorens.

KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, Louisiana

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