Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Provost and Senior Vice President, Academic Affairs, 1993-2005

University Professor Lloyd Armstrong, Jr., who oversaw some of the most significant academic advances in the university’s history, served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs from 1993 to 2005.

He is credited with driving the academic programs which have resulted in USC’s dramatic rise in various national rankings over the past decade. These include the overhaul of the core undergraduate curriculum and the university’s student-recruitment program, as well as the creation and implementation of the 1994 Strategic Plan and its 1998 update – all of which have transformed USC into one of the most selective universities in the country.

Armstrong also led a team that completed a new strategic plan, which was approved by the Board of Trustees in fall 2004, and devised and implemented a graduate student fund-raising initiative, with a goal of raising $100 million to support graduate education.

A respected physicist, Armstrong began his academic career as a research associate at Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He became an assistant professor of physics there in 1969, associate professor in 1973 and professor in 1977. He was appointed chair of the department of physics and astronomy in 1985 and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He served in that capacity until joining the USC administration in 1993.

Armstrong is a fellow of the American Physical Society and has served on a variety of panels and committees for the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, including the committee on recommendations for the U.S. Army basic scientific research; the panel for the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics of the board on assessment of the National Bureau of Standards; the panel for the National Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and the panel for physics.

He also chaired the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committee on atomic and molecular sciences and was a member of the NAS/NRC board on physics and astronomy.

He has served on the advisory boards of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., Harvard University’s Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics and the Rochester Theory Center for Optical Science and Engineering.

Armstrong currently serves on the board of directors of the California Council of Science and Technology and the Pacific Council on International Policy and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is the author or co-author of six books and has written 68 journal articles. Armstrong earned his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley in 1966.