Jim Morgan is the father of two daughters, the spouse of an engineer, and has been on the faculty at Texas A&M University for 20 years (currently an Associate Professor of civil engineering). He holds a Ph.D., M.S. and B.S.C.E. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been integrally involved in the Foundation Coalition project since its inception at Texas A&M as both faculty in the first year classroom and on the management team. His research areas are engineering education, structural engineering, structural mechanics and dynamics, earthquake engineering and highway safety.

Dr. Morgan is actively involved in the activities of first-year engineering students at Texas A&M. This includes being past coordinator of the first year course, being co-developer of the new first-year curriculum, continuing to teach Freshman engineering courses, and helping to coordinate industry involvement in our courses.

As a part of his efforts to improve teaching, Dr. Morgan has presented workshops on teaming, active/collaborative learning, and curriculum integration both at Texas A&M and across the country.Dr. Morgan has been involved in the efforts of the Foundation Coalition at Texas A&M since the fall of 1993. As a member of Management Team of the Foundation Coalition at Texas A&M University since 1996, he has been engaged in leading the freshman teaching team; in efforts related to improve retention of women and minority engineering students in the pilot program; and in institutionalizing the coalition pilot as the new curriculum at Texas A&M.Dr. Morgan is Co-PI of a current FIPSE grant to disseminate the integrated curriculum to other schools in the state of Texas, and Co-PI of the Virtual Development Center grant to Texas A&M by the Institute of Women and Technology [a grant of $425,000 of HP equipment]. The Virtual Development Center encourages students in our classes to work on (more realistic) projects related to technology for the family of the future. It is hoped that these efforts will lead to further increasing the number of women choosing to impact technology and increasing the impact of technology on these and other women.In addition, Dr. Morgan served more than 3 years as co-Director and taught in the Eisenhower Leadership Development Program at the Center for Public Leadership in the George Bush School of Government and Public Service. This course involves teams of students from the colleges of Agriculture, Business, Engineering and Liberal Arts working on interdisciplinary projects for real clients and is team-taught by representatives of each of the colleges.


Selected Publications:

Everett, L., P.K. Imbrie and J.R. Morgan. “Development of an Integrated First year Curriculum for Engineers.” Journal of Engineering Education 89, no. 2 (2000).

Morgan, Jim and Denise Martinez. “A Women and Technology Program for Freshman Engineering Students.” Paper 1268 in Frontiers in Education Conference, Kansas City, KS, October 2000.

Morgan, Jim and Denise Martinez. “Focusing Freshman Engineering and Design on Women and Technology.” Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network (WEPAN2000) Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., June 2000.

Al-Holou, N., M. Bilgutay, C. Corleto, J.T. Demel, R. Felder, K. Frair, J.E. Froyd, M. Hoit, J. Morgan and D. L. Wells. “First-Year Integrated Curricula Across the Engineering Education Coalitions.” Journal of Engineering Education 88, no. 4 (1999).

Morgan, Jim and J. Rinehart. “Inclusive Learning Communities at Texas A&M University.” Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network (WEPAN) 10th Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX, June 1999.

Malave, C., J. Rinehart., J. Morgan, R. Caso Esposito and J. T. P. Yao. “Inclusive Learning Communities at Texas A&M University—A Unique Model for Engineering.” In Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities: Connections, Collaboration, and Crossing Borders, Tampa, FL, March 1999.

Morgan, Jim and Bob Bolton. “An Integrated Freshman Engineering Curricula.” Frontiers in Education '98, Tempe, AZ, November 1998.

Bolton, Bob and Jim Morgan. “Engineering Graphics in an Integrated Environment.” Proceedings of Annual Frontiers in Education meeting, November 1997.

Morgan, Jim. “A Freshman Engineering Experience.” Proceedings of The 1997 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Milwaukee, WI, June 1997.

Morgan, Jim. “A Freshman Engineering Experience: The Foundation Coalition at Texas A&M University.” Proceedings of the 8th Annual TBEEC Conference on Learning with Technology, Long Beach, CA, November 1996.