David Kwabena Wilson, Ed.D., is the 10th inaugurated president of Morgan State University—Maryland’s Preeminent Public Urban Research University. For more than a decade, Dr. Wilson has not only been a transformative president at Morgan but has emerged as a leader among university presidents nationwide as well as an effective advocate for HBCUs and the role they play in developing leaders and serving the needs of their community, state, and nation.
Dr. Wilson has a long record of accomplishment in his more than 30 years in higher education administration. He is a nationally recognized 2023 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education winner and a newly elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S) and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Dr. Wilson also serves on the Lumina Foundation Board of Directors, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) Board of Directors, and the NCAA Board of Governors and Division I Board of Directors. Dr. Wilson is the former chairman of the HBCU/China Network, and in 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Board of Advisors on HBCUs.
Dr. Wilson has also served on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology, the Board of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the Board of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and as a member of the National Science Foundation Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering.
Among the many recognitions received throughout his professional career he has been awarded the Maryland Senate’s First Citizen Award and the Transcendent Order of the African Eagle Award. In addition, Dr. Wilson has been named as a Baltimore Business Journal Top 10 CEO, an AFRO Newspaper ‘Person of the Year,’ a Baltimore Sun Business and Civic Hall of Famer, and one of the Maryland Daily Record’s ‘Power 30’ in Higher Education. To his credit, Dr. Wilson was named in Forbes as a “Top Black Higher Ed CEO to Watch in 2023.” He has also authored two books and more than 20 articles in scholarly journals and other publications.
Prior to assuming his current position, Dr. Wilson served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and University of Wisconsin Extension; vice president for University Outreach and Associate provost for Auburn University; assistant and associate provost for Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Camden); and director for the Office of Minority Programs at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.
Dr. Wilson received his bachelor’s degree in political science and master’s in education from Tuskegee University, and master’s and doctorate in education from Harvard University. He was also bestowed with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from his alma mater Tuskegee University. His educational philosophy is to put the students’ experience first. As a leader, he is a consensus builder and a strong believer in transparency of process. Dr. Wilson’s goal is to make Morgan a leader in producing the next wave of innovators in the U.S., further cementing its call to action of Growing the Future, Leading the World.
