Michael Harris

Michael S. Harris is the Leon Simmons Endowed Dean of the Simmons School of Education and Human Development and Professor of Higher Education at Southern Methodist University. As dean, he leads one of the nation’s top-ranked private schools of education, providing strategic leadership for the school’s academic programs, research enterprise, enrollment growth, and philanthropic initiatives. Under his leadership, the school has undertaken its largest faculty expansion in more than a decade, secured significant philanthropic investments, strengthened research productivity, expanded undergraduate academic offerings, and established innovative partnerships across the University and with external organizations.

Harris also serves as SMU’s Faculty Athletics Representative, representing the University to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the NCAA.

A member of the SMU faculty since 2012, Harris has held numerous leadership roles across the University, including Chair of the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, President of the Faculty Senate, and faculty trustee on the SMU Board of Trustees. He was selected as a 2024–25 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow, spending the fellowship year at the University of Utah studying executive leadership and institutional strategy. Throughout his administrative service, Harris has championed academic excellence, shared governance, strategic investment, and organizational capacity-building to advance institutional success.

A nationally recognized scholar of higher education, Harris’ research examines leadership, governance, organizational culture, and strategy in colleges and universities. His work has been published in leading journals, including The Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, Higher Education, Innovative Higher Education, and Higher Education Policy. He is the author or co-author of four books and is currently writing a fifth, on higher education leadership, under contract with Harvard Education Press. His expertise has been featured by The Associated Press, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Tribune, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and numerous other national and regional media outlets.

Harris earned a B.A. in American History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and both an M.Ed. and Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Research

Books and Monographs

Major, C.H., Harris, M.S., & Zakrajsek, T. (2021). Teaching for learning: 101 intentionally-designed educational activities to put students on the path to success (2^nd edition). New York: Routledge

Holley, K.A., & Harris, M.S. (2019). The qualitative dissertation in education: A guide for integrating research and practice. New York: Routledge.

Harris, M.S. (2019). How to get tenure: Strategies for successfully navigating the process. New York: Routledge.

Harris, M.S. (2013). Understanding institutional diversity in American higher education. ASHE Higher Education Report, 39(3). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. PDF

Selected Journal Articles

Harris, M.S. (2021). The soft underbelly of universities as anchor institutions: The disconnect between university and community research priorities. Higher Education Policy, 34(3), 603-621.

Harris, M.S. (2020). An empirical typology of the institutional diversity of U.S. colleges and universities. Innovative Higher Education, 45(3), 183-199.

Harris, M.S. & Ellis, M.K. (2018). Exploring involuntary presidential turnover in American higher education. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(3), 294-317. PDF

Harris, M.S. & Holley, K.A. (2016). Universities as anchor institutions: Economic and social potential for urban development. In Paulsen, M.B. (Ed.) Higher education: Handbook of theory and research, Volume XXXI. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. PDF