Marisol Morales

American Council on Education

https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/staff/dr-marisol-morales/

Biographical Abstracts

Marisol Morales is the executive director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications and assistant vice president at the  American Council on Education. In this role she provides conceptual leadership and  operational oversight to the elective classifications’ work in the United States, Australia, and Canada. This includes the collaborative development of and responsibility for all initiatives, oversight and facilitation of relevant national and international advisory  committees, conceptualizing and implementing extensive data archives, as well as developing and enacting a shared vision regarding access to and use of the knowledge produced by the Carnegie Elective Classifications to guide research, policy, and practice.

Prior to this role, she was the vice president for network leadership at Campus Compact (2018-22). Morales was the founding director of the Office of Civic and Community  Engagement at the University of La Verne from 2013 to 2018 and associate director of the Steans Center for Community-Based Service Learning and Community Service Studies at  DePaul University from 2005 to 2013. In 2020, she was appointed as a visiting assistant  professor of community-engaged scholarship at the University of Central Florida. Since  2021 she has been an adjunct faculty member in the ENLACE Higher Education Master’s Program at  Northeastern Illinois University, teaching Latino higher education policy. Morales sits on the editorial board of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. Her previous board service includes serving on the editorial advisory board of Liberal Education, a publication of the Association of American Colleges, and on the board of the International  Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE).

She currently serves as the co-chair of the education committee of the Puerto Rican Agenda of Chicago and on the Illinois Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation as the board designee for 4th District Representative Lilian Jimenez. She is currently a 2024-2025 ACE fellow and a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Aspiring Leaders program fellow with the Center for Minority Serving Institutions at Rutgers - New Brunswick.

Morales holds a B.A. in Latin American/Latino studies and a M.S. in international public service management, both from DePaul University. She earned her Ed.D. in organizational leadership at the University of La Verne in 2020. Her dissertation focused on the  community engagement experiences of Latinx students at a Hispanic Serving Institution. Morales was born and raised in Chicago with ancestral roots in Puerto Rico.

Areas of Expertise

• Hispanic serving institutions and community engagement
• Carnegie Elective Classifications
• Diversity, equity, inclusion, justice
• Community organizing
• Puerto Rican human rights