Alexander Morris-Wood
Alexander (Alex) Morris-Wood is the Vice President of Program Development and Global Partnerships and Dean of Admissions and The Center for College Readiness at Beacon College. Alexander helped create Beacon College’s Transition Center which focuses on innovative programming for young adults with learning disabilities. There, he designed Navigator PREP, the country’s first virtual transition-to-college program for students and parents in an effort to proactively address the executive functioning, social, and emotional regulation deficits that impede on college success. Since his arrival, Alex also created Beacon Foundations, a live, virtual online semester program for students who learn differently. This program aims to develop students’ executive functioning, reading comprehension, and written expression skills prior to entering an on-campus program. Since the launch of these programs in 2018, Alex, and his team, have worked with over 1,000 students with learning difficulties as they proactively prepare for life after high school.
Alex has designed training programs for other colleges and programs, including a semester-long training initiative with Savannah State University. There, he works with their Professional Advisors and Peer Tutors on how to differentiate instruction and approaches for students who learn differently. Alex is also designing curricula for high schools to support post-secondary preparation for students and parents both for private institutions and larger school districts in Florida.
Before coming to Beacon College, Alex served as Director of Transition Services and Assistant Dean of Students at a private secondary school for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Nonverbal Learning Disabilities, and Asperger Syndrome. During his ten-year tenure, Alex was instrumental in designing a skill-based college readiness curriculum, which provide methods of evaluating student skill ability across academic, social-emotional, and independent living skill domains.
Alexander has presented nationally and internationally on topics including systemic barriers in higher education for students with learning disabilities, family systems theory, and strategies to improve transitional outcomes for at-risk students. Recently, Alexander was identified as one of the Top 100 Educational Leaders in America by the Global Forum for Education and Learning. Alexander has a master’s degree in mental health counseling where he focused on adjustment disorders for students with learning differences entering college environments.
