Leading and Thriving in Our Current Climate

Dr. Jerome E. Morris is President of the American Educational Research Association (2026-2027), becoming the first faculty member in the University of Missouri System elected to the position. AERA is the world's largest educational research association, with more than 25,000 members from 96 countries. He is also a former AERA Vice President.

Dr. Morris serves as the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Urban Education (in conjunction with St. Louis Public Schools) at the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL), where he directs the Center for Communally-Bonded Research. His interdisciplinary and empirically based scholarship examines the institutional structure and culture in schools, provides innovative conceptual frameworks to study marginalized communities, and cultivates meaningful partnerships with communities and schools. The nexus of race, social class, and the geography of educational opportunity represents a major theme of his scholarship. Before joining the UMSL faculty in 2015, Morris was a Full Professor in the College of Education and a Research Fellow at the University of Georgia's Institute for Behavioral Research.

A transdisciplinary scholar, Morris has been at the forefront of highlighting the centrality of the U.S. South in African-Americans' experiences, examining public school desegregation, and rebuilding viable urban communities and schools. He was awarded the prestigious Lyle M. Spencer Research Award from the Spencer Foundation to investigate the development of his theory of Communally-bonded Schooling.

An AERA Fellow and a University of Missouri System Presidential Engagement Fellow, Morris leads at the local, university, state, national, and international levels. Morris is a co-founder of Education for Liberation--a national coalition of teachers, community activists, researchers, youth, and parents. He partners with St. Louis-based community organizations such as Good Journey Development Foundation and Black Girls Do STEM, and serves on the advisory board of Sumner High School, the oldest Black High School west of the Mississippi River.

Morris is the author of the groundbreaking book, Central City's Joy and Pain: Solidarity, Survival, and Soul in a Birmingham Housing Project (University of Georgia Press) and Troubling the Waters: Fulfilling the Promise of Quality Public Schooling for Black Children (Teachers College Press). An award-winning researcher, Morris has published extensively in leading research journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Educational Researcher, Review of Research in Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Educational Policy, Urban Education, and Kappan.