In her role as Associate Dean of Prizes and Programs at Columbia, Morgan oversees the administration of the school’s many prestigious prizes and professional development workshops. In addition, she directs the annual "Let’s Do It Better!" Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity. She is the co-editor of The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity, a compilation text book, DVD, and website from award-winning stories from her program.

In 2007, Morgan oversaw the launch of the new Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Program, a performance challenge-based training program for news executives, in collaboration with the Columbia Business School Executive Leadership program.

Morgan joined the Columbia staff in August 2000 after a 31-year career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she served as an assistant managing editor for readership, hiring and staff development. In 1995, Morgan was honored with the first Knight Ridder Excellence in Diversity Award for her work to diversify the Inquirer’s staff and for her leadership in fostering diversity issues throughout Knight Ridder newspapers, corporate owner of The Inquirer. A graduate of Temple University, Morgan has lectured at several universities, including Columbia, and was a fellow in 1996-1997 at the Freedom Forum’s Media Studies Center.

Selections from interview with Sarah Hart in April, 2008:

What should we be teaching in Journalism School?

We should be developing lots of different forms about how to cover stories. For example, we should reform how we cover education. Right now, it's covered almost entirely from a political side, with statistics, but very rarely from the perspective of sociological issues. Why don't we cover education from business perspective? From a health perspective? Why aren't we covering those issues?

The students will pick up technology. They'll pick up craft. I'm not worried about that. But they need to learn how to think beyond their own perspective, outside of the little box they live in. The most important thing a journalism education can offer is the critical thinking skills that journalists must develop in order to accurately cover the world they live in. I try to get my students to digest the books they read. What is the context? What is the voice? What kind of other approaches could the author have taken? Then, I hope when they write they will be asking themselves, "Why this story? Why this way?"

The hardest thing is getting them to understand what a story is. They are so into blogs and opinion. And some of them are cynical, rather than skeptical. Anyone can blog, but what makes a journalist?

There needs to be some sense of social responsibility in what it means to be a journalist. That's why they need to understand what a story is, and ask the important question about why this story is important, how is it relevant to society?

What are you trying to teach your students?

Aside from the fundamentals, I use my Authentic Voice course to teach them to think more fully about what constitutes a complete story. I ask them to discuss what's missing in the story, who is missing? I am a big fan of using the late Bob Maynard's fault lines concepts that force students to analyze a story through a number of perspectives – race, ethnicity, geography, age, gender, sexual orientation and class, that latter being one of the most overlooked sources of reporting. I try to teach them to face their own blind spots that are often obstacles to finding and achieving ideas and sources that they may not pursue otherwise. I also try to teach them to tell stories that offer voice, context and authority to a complex situation. I want them to learn to report from the inside out, to make readers feel that they are part of the story, not bystanders.

What changes would you like to see to journalism school?

I would like to see the instruction on writing and reporting, which is currently bundled into one foundation course, broken down into two levels – reporting and then writing. Both are equally important but beginning students need to focus more deeply on the reporting before they move into the writing. Students need how to confront tough situations, and ask the sensitive questions that they certainly will have to answer when they are professionals. Learning how to ask those questions and listen, really listen, to the answers teaches how to think critically about what your role is as a reporter. Learning how to report from a number of angles, especially when the people and perspectives are different from you, is essential to the writing. I find that students want to rush into the writing before they have all the facts, often substituting their opinions and assumptions for serious reporting that can be verified. For these reasons, I have come to believe that teaching reporting should be uncoupled from the writing.