Jerome E. Morris, the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Urban Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has been named president-elect of the American Educational Research Association Council. He will serve in this role for the 2025-2026 academic year, followed by a term as president in 2026-2027.
At the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Dr. Morris directs the Race, Class, Place, and Outcomes Interdisciplinary Research Group. His scholarship centers on race, social class, and the geography of educational opportunities. In his work, he examines achievement-gap issues, researches school desegregation, and studies how to rebuild viable urban communities and schools. He is the author of Troubling the Waters: Fufilling the Promise of Quality Public Schooling for Black Children (Teachers College Press, 2009) and Central City’s Joy and Pain: Solidarity, Survival, and Soul in a Birmingham Housing Project (University of Georgia Press, 2024).
Dr. Morris holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Austin Peay State University in Tennessee and a Ph.D. in educational policy from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Tabbye M. Chavous has been appointed as the executive director of the American Educational Research Association. She will begin her new role on August 11.
Dr. Chavous currently serves as a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan. She is also an administrative leader, serving as the university’s vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer. Her career has been dedicated to advancing educational equity. She has conducted extensive research on social and academic identity development among Black adolescents and young adults; achievement motivation processes among underrepresented students; and the measurement of educational climates on students’ academic, social, and psychological adjustment.
Dr. Chavous holds a Ph.D. in community psychology from the University of Michigan
