Dr. Jerome E. Morris is the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Urban Education (in conjunction with St. Louis Public Schools), and he directs the Race, Class, Place, and Outcomes Interdisciplinary Research Group at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL).

Before joining the faculty of UMSL, Morris was a Full Professor in the College of Education and a Research Fellow at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Behavioral Research. Morris’ 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.

Morris has been at the forefront of highlighting the centrality of the U.S. South in African-Americans’ experiences, examining achievement-gap issues, researching school desegregation, and rebuilding viable urban communities and schools. He was recently awarded the prestigious Lyle M. Spencer Research Award from the Spencer Foundation to investigate the development of his theory of Communally-bonded Schooling. A University of Missouri System Presidential Engagement Fellow, Morris serves as a leader at the local, university, state, and national levels, Morris is a co-founder of Education for Liberation--a national coalition of teachers, community activists, researchers, youth, and parents. He serves as the Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association and partners with St. Louis-based community organizations such as Good Journey Development Foundation and Southeast Ferguson Community Association.

Morris is the author of Troubling the Waters: Fulfilling the Promise of Quality Public Schooling for Black Children (Teachers College Press) and Central City’s Blues: Race, Place, and Life in the Housing Projects of the Urban South (Publication forthcoming). An award-winning researcher, Morris has published extensively in leading research journals such as 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.