Title: Professor of Biology
Company: Troy University
Location: Troy, Alabama, United States
Michael Wayne Morris, PhD, Professor of Biology at Troy University, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Educators for dedication, achievements and leadership in Higher Education.
Dr. Morris has established a career in the biological sciences, especially in the field of botany, with over three decades of dedicated service to education, research and community engagement. For the past 10 years, he has served as professor of biology in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Troy University. In this capacity, Dr. Morris teaches a comprehensive range of courses, including Principles of Biology, Organismal Biology, General Ecology, Field Botany, Dendrology, Cell Biology, and Biogeography Field Study. He has coordinated faculty and graduate teaching assistants for lectures and laboratories, has developed laboratory exercises in ecology and human biology, and advises students majoring in biology with concentrations in general biology, ecology and field biology, and biomedical sciences.
Committed to student success, Dr. Morris has been instrumental in supervising both undergraduate and graduate research projects, particularly in field botany, plant conservation and the preservation of natural areas. His efforts have created baseline data for the future management and monitoring of rare plant species. Dr. Morris has also co-authored a laboratory manual with Cengage Publishing authors customized for Troy University and used all royalties to establish a financial account to support undergraduate and graduate student research and travel to professional conferences.
In addition to his primary academic appointments, Dr. Morris has served on graduate student thesis committees as a member of the Associate Graduate Faculty at The University of Southern Mississippi since 2022, and he has been a field associate at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science since 2015. He has coordinated internships for students attending both North Georgia College and Troy University. In 2003 and 2006, he facilitated opportunities for students to study longleaf pine forest ecology at the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center in southwestern Georgia. Dr. Morris connected students with the internship program in rangeland ecology at the University of Wyoming in 2024 and 2025, and with the summer program in Gulf Coastal Plain ecology at The University of Southern Mississippi in 2025. These academic partnerships are ongoing.
Before his current role, Dr. Morris served as associate professor at Troy University from 2008 to 2016. Earlier, he was freshman biology coordinator between 2006 and 2014, overseeing instruction for introductory lectures and laboratories, and a lecturer from 2006 to 2007.
Before joining Troy University, Dr. Morris was employed in the Department of Biology at North Georgia College, now known as the University of North Georgia, from 1993 to 2006 and attained the rank of professor in 2003. There, he developed a reputation for excellence in teaching and research and fostered student engagement through research projects and internship coordination.
While in graduate school, Dr. Morris worked at the University of Florida, first as a teaching assistant from 1988 to 1990 and then as a research associate in the Department of Botany until 1993. His experience in Florida also included an internship at Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota and an expedition to Monteverde, Costa Rica, to collect epiphytic and terrestrial orchids for horticultural, herbarium, and histological specimens in 1989.
Earlier during his graduate studies in Mississippi, Dr. Morris was a research assistant at the USDA Southern Weed Science Laboratory in 1987 and 1988, a teaching assistant in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mississippi State University from 1986 to 1987, and a field botanist at The Crosby Arboretum of Mississippi State University in 1986. As an undergraduate student in Mississippi, Dr. Morris was a laboratory assistant in the Department of Biological Sciences at Delta State University in 1984, and a computer operator in the Department of Data Processing at Delta State University from 1982 to 1985. Dr. Morris earned a Bachelor of Science with a double major in biology and chemistry from Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, in 1985, followed by a Master of Science in botany (plant taxonomy) from Mississippi State University in Starkville, in 1987, and a Doctor of Philosophy in botany (systematics and anatomy) from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1993.
Throughout his career, Dr. Morris has been an active member of a number of professional organizations and has life membership in the Association of Southeastern Biologists, the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society, and the Society of Herbarium Curators. He chaired the Graduate Student Support Award Committee for the Association of Southeastern Biologists in 2008 to 2009, and served on the committee for three years. Dr. Morris was on the board of directors for the Georgia Botanical Society from 2001 to 2010, and chaired its field botany student research grant committee that established protocol and application submission guidelines for this grant program in 2002; the grant program has continued to the present time. He has served in various roles in other scientific organizations.
Dr. Morris’s scholarly output includes authorship and co-authorship of more than 20 scientific journal articles. He discovered and described with two co-authors Pediomelum piedmontanum, a rare legume that was previously unknown, native to Georgia and South Carolina. Among his other discoveries are finding new populations of Lindera melissifolia, a federally endangered shrub, and Apios priceana, a federally threatened vine, in Mississippi. With collaborators at the University of Florida, he reported a previously unknown type of plastid in roots of spiranthoid orchids. Additionally, he served on the advisory committee for the Field Guide to the Rare Plants of Georgia between 2004 and 2007. Dr. Morris was a contributing author for The Natural Communities of Georgia, published by The University of Georgia Press in 2013, in which he addressed ultramafic barrens and woodlands. He has written numerous educational outreach articles on native plants for The Crosby Arboretum of Mississippi State University, the Georgia Botanical Society, and the Georgia Native Plant Society, among others.
Students working with Dr. Morris and faculty collaborators have received Best Student Paper/Poster Presentation Awards at the 2001 meeting of the Georgia Academy of Science and at the 2015 meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists. Subjects of the research projects ranged from pitcher plant prey capture studies to investigations of medicinal and toxic chemical compounds in specific native plants.
Dr. Morris is most grateful for the privilege of working with so many talented students and colleagues and for his extensive experience spanning over more than 30 years. He is thankful for the guidance provided by his parents and numerous mentors throughout his journey, and he hopes to offer similar mentorship to current and future generations. Looking ahead, Dr. Morris aims to continue providing exemplary service through dedicated teaching, impactful scholarship and meaningful initiatives that benefit students at Troy University, the broader community and his profession as a whole.
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