Grambling State celebrates new president, new era
Grambling State University and its newest president, Martin Lemelle, Jr., made history in more ways than one at Lemelle’s investiture ceremony Friday.
As a host of dignitaries gathered in the Fredrick C. Hobdy Assembly Center to formally recognize GSU’s 11th president through a ritual tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, Lemelle became the first in the university’s history to receive an investiture.
Though he actually took office in February following an appointment by the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors — taking the place of former President Rick Gallot, who had just become president of the UL System — Lemelle was also recognized Friday as the youngest president of a Historically Black College and University in the nation at 39 years old.
A native son of Grambling and a third-generation GSU alumnus, Lemelle also happens to be the first and only Student Government Association president to rise to president of the university.
So it was a day of firsts, and in terms of investitures, this one at GSU was also unique because the system president and the university’s previous president, who would typically each take part in such a ceremony, are the same person.
As he prepared to present Lemelle with the presidential chain of office and formally “vest” him with the powers of the office, Gallot recalled when he first took Grambling’s top chair and made the call to get Lemelle on his staff.
“I knew in my heart, in my spirit, that I needed someone like Martin,” Gallot said.
Lemelle served as Gallot’s executive vice president, COO and CFO from 2016 to 2021, a time that saw significant enrollment increases and improvement in GSU’s fiscal health scores, among other gains.
“As much as I was the public face of the success of this university over the last seven years, it would not have been possible without Martin,” Gallot said.
He was far from the only one to sing Lemelle’s praises as representatives from every facet of the university, as well as state officials and a “village” of Lemelle’s family and friends, celebrated a new era in this storied university’s long history.
“Yes, he is young, but check out his bio, his curriculum vitae,” Grambling University Foundation Chair Janet Barnes said. “Yes, he’s a dreamer, but look at his reality.”
Lemelle was more recently the executive vice president and CFO of Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He also made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in Louisiana’s 5th congressional district in 2020.
He holds a doctorate in business administration from the SKEMA Business School in Paris, France, an experience that contributed to his announcement Friday of the establishment of a $1 million endowment that will fund study abroad programs for GSU students, among other endeavors.
“He is a brother from the piney woods of Grambling, Louisiana who is well-liked, wellread, well-traveled, welldressed, well-informed, well- spoken, and I’m telling y’all right now, he better be well-received,” said Melva Wallace, president and CEO of Huston Tillotson University.
Lemelle was selected unanimously among three finalists to lead GSU after a three-month search.
Gary Poe, president of GSU’s Faculty Senate and a member of the presidential search committee, said when he first met Lemelle he realized that Lemelle “sees things that others don’t.”
“That’s a mark I want to see in a leader,” Poe said. “I want him to see what no one else sees, and I want to inspire us to reach it, and that he has consistently done.”
Poe said seeing Lemelle, as a 2006 GSU graduate and high-profile student, come full circle back to lead his alma mater, is a fulfilling feeling as a teacher.
“I’m investing my heart and my soul into each and every one of my students,” Poe said to Lemelle. “We are just so proud to have you in that seat, because it says the efforts that we made came to fruition in you.”
Aside from announcing the endowment, Lemelle once again leaned into the “tell them we’re building” theme that has come to mark his first year at GSU’s helm.
“Let us build, let us dream, and let us rise together as one,” he said.
