Gwendolyn Boyd, who has served as the 14th president of Alabama State University in Montgomery since February 1, 2014, has had her contact extended by the board of trustees for another three years until 2019. However, the vote by the board was 8 to 6 in favor of the contract extension, so many board members were opposed. President Boyd had engaged in a power struggle with several board members over her plans to reorganize the university’s administration. The Montgomery Advertiser referred to Dr. Boyd’s first six months in office as a “hornet’s nest.”
Before becoming president at Alabama State, Dr. Boyd was the executive assistant to the chief of staff of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland. She is the former president of the 200,000-member Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Dr. Boyd is a graduate of Alabama State University. She was the first African American to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Yale University. President Boyd holds a second master’s degree and a doctorate from Howard University in Washington, D.C.
