Dr. Morris has worked in higher education for more than 45 years as a graduate teaching assistant, as a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, and as a Mathematics Department Chair. This experience includes more than 14 years as a full-time Associate Professor of Mathematics online, and a total of 13 years at Virginia State University. The first employment at VSU was from 1992 through 2005 as a tenured Full Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the second employment from August 2019 to present as a term Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. Dr. Morris has taught all undergraduate mathematics courses and several graduate-level mathematics courses over his career.
He earned a PhD in Algebraic Topology at Virginia Tech in 1974 and an MS in Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2000, specializing in software testing. Virginia State University paid the tuition for the MS in Computer Science.
In 1985 Dr. Morris earned the Certified Computing Professional – Management Certificate from the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP), and the Certified Data Educator (CDE) Certificate from the Data Education Certification Council.
Dr. Morris and Dr. Dawit Haile, who is now Dean of the College of Engineering Technology, started the original computer science program and courses at VSU in the late 1990s. After 2005 Dr. Morris worked for American InterContinental University Online until 2018. He briefly taught mathematics courses at Richard Bland College until he returned to VSU for the Fall semester 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science where he taught courses in both departments.
Dr. Morris taught mathematics and computer courses at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia during 1971 and 1972, and also taught mathematics and computer courses at the University of the Cumberlands (formerly Cumberland College) in Williamsburg, Kentucky. He was Full Professor and Chairman of the Mathematical Sciences Department from 1980 to mid-1984 at the University of the Cumberlands.
He left the University of the Cumberlands in 1984 to serve as Computer Scientist and Project Manager at Ft. Lee (now Ft. Gregg-Adams), Virginia for the Department of the Army Movement Management System – Movement Planning System (DAMMS-MPM), a fully stochastic Fortran war games system. During his second employment at Ft. Lee in 1989 Dr. Morris also served as a Computer Scientist and Project Manager for large software development for the U. S. Army at Ft. Lee, VA. He was Computer Scientist and Project Manager for the first Ada software development at Ft. Lee, Virginia. The Ada development project was the Standard Army Maintenance System - Installation - Table of Distributions and Allowances (SAMS-I-TDA). At full strength, the project had 34 programmers and senior analysts. Both of these projects were development efforts of the combined resources of the United States Army and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). CSC has now merged with Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Enterprise Services) to form the large multi-national corporation, DXC.
Dr. Morris’ first experience with computers came in 1965 at Appalachian State University as a graduate student where he took a course in FORTRAN-4 and Machine Language. After making an A in that course, he became the computer assistant for that course for the remainder of his Master’s Degree studies. In addition to mathematics, computer science seemed very interesting and useful. While at Appalachian State University, he worked with an IBM 1620 card-based system with 16k of two-byte magnetic core memory and no hard drive. He has worked with computers of all sizes in various roles since then. While at the University of the Cumberlands he taught BASIC, Pascal, Assembler Language, Database Management Systems, and many other computer courses. He has collected software and hardware for mathematics and computer science for more than 20 years. As a discipline his love of computer science is only exceeded by his love of mathematics!