Dr. Tom Griffiths came to Lycoming College in July 2007 after 26 years at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. As a biology professor at Illinois Wesleyan, Dr. Griffiths taught and did research in the areas of anatomy and evolutionary biology. His research specialty was the anatomy and evolution of bats, and he involved dozens of undergraduate biology students in his research, resulting in a number who became co-authors of published scientific papers. Dr. Griffiths has studied bats from nearly every continent in the world, and he has traveled to the Caribbean, Panama, China, Australia, and Europe to work on bats. An accomplished scholar, Dr. Griffiths has published papers on bats and other mammals in a number of scientific journals, and he edited a book on bat biology with David Klingener of the University of Massachusetts. His wife, Dr. Margaret Griffiths, is a biochemist and physiologist who worked originally on the complex biochemistry of liver enzymes, but she has subsequently been co-opted and now does research on and writes about bats. His older daughter Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Duke University. She lives in the Washington DC area, and works for the American Chemical Society. Younger daughter Anne is completing a Master's of Divinity at Starr King Seminary in Berkeley, California, and plans to become a Unitarian-Universalist minister, unless her father can convince her to study bats.

Dr. Griffiths held several administrative positions in his later years at Illinois Wesleyan, including Acting Dean of the Faculty, Associate Dean of the Faculty and Director of the Mellon Center for Faculty and Curriculum Development. In recognition of his teaching and scholarship at Illinois Wesleyan, Dr. Griffiths held an endowed professorship as the Earl H. and Marion A. Beling Professor of Natural Science. He is a member of a number of professional societies, including the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the American Conference of Academic Deans, the American Society of Mammalogists, and the Society for the Study of Mammalian Evolution. Dr. Griffiths has been recognized for his teaching excellence and campus leadership, and was twice named Professor of the Year at Illinois Wesleyan. In 1991, he was selected as one of America's "Top 10 College Professors" by Rolling Stone Magazine. Dr. Griffiths earned a bachelor of science in biology from Bates College, a master of science in zoology from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Massachusetts. He is a member of the academic honor societies Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Xi.