Dr. David Wilson - President, Morgan State University
Dr. David Wilson, the 10th inaugurated president of Morgan State University, has a long record of accomplishments and more than 30 years of experience in higher education administration.
He holds four academic degrees: a B.S. in political science and an M.S. in education from Tuskegee University; a master’s in educational planning and administration from Harvard University; and a doctorate in administration, planning and social policy, also from Harvard.
He came to Morgan State from the University of Wisconsin, where he was chancellor of both the University of Wisconsin Colleges, and the University of Wisconsin–Extension. Before that, he held numerous other administrative posts in academia, including vice president and associate provost at Auburn University, and associate provost of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Dr. Wilson has authored two books and more than 20 articles. Among his many honors, he was named one of the nation’s top 100 leaders in higher education by the American Association of Higher Education in 1998, was selected as one of The Daily Record newspaper’s Influential Marylanders for 2011, and was honored by the University of Alabama with an award for outstanding leadership in engaged scholarship in 2011.
He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC), the American Council on Education (ACE), the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the Association of Public and LandGrant Universities (APLU), and on the Governing Board of the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center. He is a member of the P20 Leadership Council of Maryland. He is also a member of President Barack Obama’s national Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Dr. Wilson’s achievements as leader of Maryland’s public urban university have clearly been strong, but it is the character he brings to the presidency, a character shaped by the intangibles of his background, that is perhaps most impressive of all. He grew up with 10 siblings on a sharecropper farm outside the small town of McKinley, Alabama. Through hard work, tenacity and the encouragement of his father and teachers, he became the first in his family to attend college.