Leon Tarver to address LSUS graduates 05/07/02

Dr. Leon R. Tarver II, president of Louisiana’s Southern University System, will deliver the commencement address at the LSU in Shreveport spring graduation.

Commencement exercise will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday (May 15) at Expo Hall in Shreveport, according to LSUS Chancellor Dr. Vince Marsala, who also announced Tarver as the commencement speaker.

“Dr. Tarver is from Shreveport and has had a distinguished career in university administration,” Marsala said. “Among other prominent positions, he has served as assistant dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. We feel it is fitting to bring him back home to Shreveport as the LSUS commencement speaker in recognition of his outstanding and meritorious service to higher education, the state of Louisiana and the Southern University System.”

Tarver will address the 286 graduates, as well as their family, friends and members of the university faculty and staff. Conferring the degrees for the LSU System Board of Supervisors will be board member C. Stuart Slack, of Shreveport.

Tarver also serves as a professor of public administration in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs on Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus. He hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Southern, a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. degree in public administration and management from the Union Institute in Cincinnati.

He has held academic and administrative positions at the national, state and local levels in both the private and public sectors. In the private sector, he served as president and chairman of the board of United General Financial Corporation of Baton Rouge, president and chairman of the board of TarCorp, Inc., executive vice president and chief executive officer of National Compensation Control Systems, Inc., and president and chairman of the board of J. S. Williams & Son, Inc., a family-owned business founded in 1898.

His public sector experience includes secretary of the Louisiana Department of Revenue and Taxation, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Urban and Community Affairs, assistant superintendent of the Louisiana Department of Education, executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, community relations specialist with the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice, associate executive director of the Community Action Program for Caddo and Bossier Parishes, Inc., vice chancellor for administration at Southern University-Baton Rouge, and assistant dean and director of the Lucius N. Littauer Program in Public Administration at Harvard University.

Tarver has established a Harvard-Southern Collaboration on South Africa, and is a member of the Louisiana Task Force on Africa Trade Finance and Development. He and his wife, Cynthia Loeb Tarver, have a daughter, Germaine Alisa, and two sons, Leon III and Victor I.