Christopher Morphew

Christopher Clark Morphew (/ˈ m ɔːr f j uː / ; born 1967) is an American academic and the current dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education, a position he assumed on August 1, 2017.

He worked from 1996 to 1997 as a visiting assistant professor for the Higher Education Program at Iowa State University, in Ames, Iowa. He moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1997, where he became an assistant professor in the Higher Education Administration Program at the University of Kansas. In 2002, he became an associate professor in the program. From 2004 to 2007, he was on the Faculty for Executive Doctorate in the Higher Education Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, he moved to Athens, Georgia, to teach as an associate professor at the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education. From December 2006 until June 2009, he was the graduate program coordinator for the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education. Between August 2006 and June 2009, he was co-director of the Franklin Fellows Postdoctoral Teaching Program for the University of Georgia. In 2009, he moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where he was a professor of educational policy and leadership studies at the University of Iowa College of Education for eight years, and departmental executive officer chair of this program from July 2009 to May 2014. For two years, Morphew took sabbatical, working as a visiting professor at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway as a Leif Erickson Scholar. From January 2014 to July 2017, he was the executive associate dean for research and innovation at the University of Iowa College of Education. On August 1, 2017, he became the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education in Baltimore, Maryland. In the late summer of 2017 he moved to Towson, Maryland.

Morphew married his wife, Tanya Kooi, on 28 May, 1994. Tanya Kooi is a graduate of Iowa State University and the University of Iowa and holds a bachelor's degree from the former and a master's degree in Student Development from the latter. His first child, Anthony Kooi Morphew, was born in 2000. His next son, Samuel Kooi Morphew, was born in 2002. Five years later, his youngest child, Clara Kooi Morphew, was born in 2007, in Athens, Georgia, United States. His son, Anthony, attended Iowa City High School and Towson High School. After graduation, he studies linguistics at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York. Christopher Morphew is the youngest of three children. His sister, Melinda Johnson, is an adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She lives with her husband, Jeffery, a public education administrator, in Denver, Colorado. His brother, Alan Morphew, is an independent musician in Northwest Iowa.

For the early part of his life he lived in Nemaha, Iowa, before moving to Estherville, Iowa. He graduated from Estherville Lincoln Central High School in 1986. He went on to study at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend, Indiana. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BA degree in Government and Philosophy in 1990, followed by a Master of Education degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1991. He received a Master of Arts degree in sociology from Stanford University in 1994. He was awarded his PhD in social sciences and educational practices from Stanford University in 1996, with a thesis, "Statewide governing boards and program duplication: a longitudinal system of seven public systems of higher education".

Morphew was born in 1967 in Des Moines, Iowa. A couple months later, he was adopted by Susan (née Faleo) and Larry Morphew. His parents were both public school teachers. He is biracial and African-American.