Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The head of Mississippi State’s political science and public administration department is receiving a major professional recognition.

Professor Minion K.C. Morrison is this year’s selection for the Frank J. Goodnow Award for Distinguished Service of the American Political Science Association. He accepted the honor in ceremonies prior to the association’s recent annual conference in San Francisco, California.

Since 2009, Morrison has led the academic unit that is part of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. He also is a senior associate in MSU’s African American Studies program.

Morrison is the author of several books, the most recent of which is a biography of a major figure in the state’s 1960s civil rights struggle who later won election to the Mississippi House of Representatives. “Aaron Henry of Mississippi: Inside Agitator” is a July release of the University of Arkansas Press.

APSA was founded in 1903 and currently enrolls more than 13,000 members in more than 80 countries. Considered the leading organization in its academic field, the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit works to help political scientists in and out of higher education continually expand their knowledge of politics, democracy and citizenship throughout the world. For more, see www.apsanet.org.

Established in 1996, its Goodnow Award recognizes the outstanding contributions of teachers, researchers and public servants working in the many fields of politics.

Morrison is a 1968 honors graduate of Tougaloo College who went on to complete master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds a certification in African studies from the University of Ghana in Accra.

Before returning to Mississippi, he held the Frederick Middlebush Chair of Political Science at the University of Missouri. He earlier taught at Syracuse University, Hobart and William Smith College and Tougaloo.

In extending the College of Arts and Sciences’ congratulations, Dean R. Gregory Dunaway praised Morrison for “epitomizing the very best in academic values.

“He has produced extraordinary scholarship, been an invaluable teacher and mentor to our students and has been an effective and highly respected leader at our university, as well as the larger community,” Dunaway added.

Learn more about the political science and public administration department at www.pspa.msstate.edu; the College of Arts and Sciences, at www.cas.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s flagship research university, available online at www.msstate.edu.