MACON – Mercer Innovation Center (MIC) will welcome Dr. Mary Alice Morgan, senior vice provost for service learning at the University, as part of the Open MIC Student Entrepreneurial Lecture Series Sept. 22 from 11 a.m.-noon.
The student-oriented lecture series is free and open to the public and will take place in the Mercer Innovation Center, located in the former Religious Life Center on Mercer's Macon campus.
Dr. Morgan, professor of English and women's and gender studies, earned her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and both her Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In 2013, Dr. Morgan was named a finalist for the national Campus Compact Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award that recognizes outstanding leadership in advancing students' civic learning, fostering community partnerships, conducting community-based research and enhancing higher education's contributions to the public good. An advocate for social justice both on campus and in the community, she has initiated projects to raise awareness about issues such as violence against women, sex trafficking, poverty and racial inequality.
She served as co-principal investigator for a $500,000 planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education Promise Neighborhood program to create pipelines of support and empowerment in Macon's Unionville and Tindall Heights neighborhoods. Macon was one of only 15 communities in the nation and the only one in the Southeast to receive the grant.
Dr. Morgan was presented with the second annual Lt. Randy Parker Memorial Volunteer of the Year Award by the United Way of Central Georgia in 2016 for her work in support of the organziation's Read2Succeed Initiative, which focuses on making sure children are reading at or above grade level when they finish third grade.
MIC and SparkMacon, Macon's premier makerspace, aim to develop the already rich and brewing culture of entrepreneurism and innovative thinking in Macon and at Mercer. Through efforts such as the Open MIC Student Entrepreneurial Lecture Series, the organizations strive to foster relationships, network, and collaborate with entrepreneurs, local community, other universities and beyond.
For more information, to be added to the MIC listserv, or to be considered as a speaker for the series, contact Dr. Sam Lankford, director of the Mercer Innovation Center, at mic@mercer.edu or Nadia Osman, director of SparkMacon, at nadia@sparkmacon.com.
