Maison-Ganamet
Academic Leadership

Office of
The Provost

Academic leadership & excellence, driving the educational mission of IUGB forward.

IUGB 2026

Professor DeBrenna LaFa Agbényiga

Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs

Visionary Leader · Global Scholar · Transformational Education Leader · Human Rights Oriented

Meet Our Provost

Academic Vision & Excellence

Professor DeBrenna LaFa Agbényiga, Ph.D., MBA, MSW, serves as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the International University of Grand-Bassam (IUGB), an institution of excellence delivering American-style education in francophone West Africa. With nearly 30 years in higher education administration across R1 research universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, HBCUs, and religious-affiliated colleges, she has advanced diversity, equity, inclusion, student success, accreditation, global education, and strategic planning.

At IUGB she oversees the university's academic enterprise, including its schools, faculty development, recruitment, enrollment, retention, student life, and research, while navigating the institutional culture of Côte d'Ivoire to drive economic impact. Previously she held provost roles at Stonehill College and Bowie State University, and served as Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), where she pioneered the first Graduate Student Success Center, implemented Salesforce CRM to strengthen graduate recruitment and advising, supported doctoral expansion toward R1 status, and collaborated with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Earlier, she held associate dean positions and led equity and inclusion initiatives at Michigan State University.

She brings deep accreditation experience with U.S. regional bodies, including the Higher Learning Commission, the New England Commission of Higher Education, and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, as well as discipline-specific accreditation through CSWE, ABET, AACSB, and CAEP. Her scholarship examines organizational culture, international development, entrepreneurship, community sustainability, women's and children's rights, cross-cultural learning, and refugee and immigrant resettlement, with published work in outlets such as Advances in Social Work, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and the Journal of Community Practice.

Professor Agbényiga has led study-abroad programs in Ghana and Jamaica and has worked for years across Western, Eastern, and Southern Africa as a researcher and consultant to ministries, NGOs, and universities, with projects spanning Ghana, Togo, South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia, Nigeria, Jamaica, and Côte d'Ivoire. She is currently leading the Giving Voice to Values for Students French project, translating the program into French and designing ethical dilemma case studies for the francophone context.

Education

  • ✦ Ph.D., Social Work (Urban Studies), Michigan State University
  • ✦ M.S.W., Social Work (Urban Studies), Michigan State University
  • ✦ M.B.A., Integrative Strategic Management, Michigan State University
  • ✦ B.A., Criminal Justice (Sociology minor), University of South Carolina

Academic Oversight

School of SSE

Science & Engineering

School of BSS

Business & Social Sciences

Key Focus Areas

  • ✦ Curriculum development and academic program innovation across degree programs and the University Preparatory Program (UPP)
  • ✦ Faculty recruitment, development, and mentorship
  • ✦ Pursuing international accreditation standards
  • ✦ Student academic support and success initiatives
  • ✦ International Institutional Partnerships and Collaborations

Key Achievements

  • ✦ Provost at Stonehill College and Bowie State University, and Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
  • ✦ Pioneered UTSA's first Graduate Student Success Center and implemented Salesforce CRM to strengthen graduate recruitment, advising, and the student experience.
  • ✦ Supported doctoral expansion toward R1 status and collaborated with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB).
  • ✦ Accreditation leadership across the HLC, NECHE, and MSCHE, plus CSWE, ABET, AACSB, and CAEP.
  • ✦ Board and advisory roles including the Opoku Ware School (Ghana) Endowment Fund, the African Council on Foreign Relations (ACFR), and Founding Ambassador of the 250X2040 Initiative.
  • ✦ Leads the Giving Voice to Values for Students French project and engages globally through the Education Collaborative (Rwanda and South Africa), RUFORUM AGM 2025, and the International Association of Universities (IAU).

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Fatima Doumbia Koné is a Mathematics lecturer at the international University of
Grand-Bassam (IUGB). Among the courses she taught we have the following: Introduction to
Differential Equations, Elementary Statistics, Calculus(I,II,III), Transforms in Applied Math,
Introduction to Linear Algebra, Operations Research and Abstract Algebra.
She has a Bachelor degree in Mathematics (IUGB), a Master degree in Pure and Applied
Mathematics (AUST) and she is currently enrolled for a PhD in Mathematics at the African
University of Science and Tecnology (AUST), Abuja. She has also been an intern at the
Institutional Banking Group department within GTBANK CI (Garanty Trust Bank Côte
D’Ivoire).
She is a former IUGB student and she was the president of the science club in 2015.
Academically, her goal is to be a great researcher and innovator on the topics of asymptotic
theories in Fuzzy Probability Theory and their various applications to image processing. She
has good programming skills (JAVA, LaTeX, C++) and she is bilingual (French and English).
Over the years, she has been developing a method of teaching which not only put students at
the center of the learning process but also which deconstruct most of the stereotypes about the
inaccessibility of mathematical knowledge to everybody.
Regarding her research activities, she has been working since 2018 on the topic of integration
on Banach spaces and a preprint of an interesting work is available at
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.04480. She is continuing with her research on integration but now
her PhD studies focus on Random Sets Integration in Probability Theory. Professionally, she
is a very active lecturer at IUGB and she is currently the faculty advisor of the SHE CLUB,
which aims at promoting women empowerment by providing learning, leadership and
networking opportunities.

I am currently Associate Professor of computer and data science in the school of science technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at the International University of Grand-Bassam (IUGB).
From 2000 to 2018, I successively worked as a research scientist at Independent Computing Research in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Assistant Professor at the department of computer science and
engineering at Université Laval in Québec, Canada; Research Associate at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) where I also received a Ph.D. degree in computer science in March 2000. Upon receiving a master's degree in mathematical and computing science
from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) in 1990 in Japan, I worked as a research scientist at National/Panasonic, one of the most prestigious companies in Tokyo.
I am involved in research on Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Semantic Web and its applications in a wide range of fields. Besides, I designed the current Data Science program in effect
since September 2021 in STEM. In addition, I am also one the founders and current President of the
Ivorian Association of Artificial Intelligence and member of ORBICOM, the Network of UNESCO Chairs in Communication headquartered in University of Quebec in Montreal (UQUAM), Canada.

Kwame Simpe Ofori is an Assistant Professor in Finance at the school of Business and Social Sciences. He holds a doctorate degree in Finance, a master’s degree in finance and a master’s degree in Telecommunications Technology. He is also currently a PhD student at the School of Management and Economics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He has taught courses in the areas of finance, computer science, computer and electrical engineering, and telecommunication engineering. Before joining IUGB he lectured in several universities in Ghana. He also worked with Ghana Telecommunications Company as a support engineer. His research interests are in the areas of consumer behaviour, technology adoption and trust in online systems and in recent times financial econometrics. His papers have appeared in several CABS-ranked journals such as Information Technology and People, Journal of Cleaner Productions, Quality Management Journal, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, Journal of African Business, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology and Society and Business Review.