Dr. Karen Morell

Director, UW TRIO Training & TRIO Quest

Karen Morell has directed TRIO Training Programs at the University of Washington for 20 years.  Training topics have included educational technology, graduation and retention strategies, program evaluation, federal reporting requirements, and program management.  She has engaged a national training team and staff based at the University of Washington.  Her roles as director have included that of trainer, supervisor of data collection and evaluation activities, and project management.  

In her work with educational technology, she has directed the TRIO Quest web-based activities for TRIO students since its inception in 1999.  This work has included directing grants from the Oracle Education Foundation and serving as a judge of the ThinkQuest international competition sponsored by that organization.  She directed the Microsoft/TRIO partnership for eight years that brought 33 million dollars in software to TRIO programs and served as co-chair for the first years of the Council for Opportunity in Education’s Technology Committee.

In addition, she served as Special Assistant to the Vice President for Minority Affairs at the University of Washington, directed the Correctional Education and Research Program (with grants from the U.S. Department of Justice among others), and the Upward Bound Program.

She holds a Ph.D. and Master’s in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts in English.  She taught African Literature at the University of Washington, produced the African Encounters video series, and served on the African Studies Faculty Committee.  The University published her collection of edited transcripts from the 1973 African Studies Seminar in the book In Person: Achebe, Soyinka, and Awoonor.  She produced documentaries from film that were included in the Saint Louis Art Museum and Smithsonian’s Festival Arts of the Caribbean.  These programs are part of the Alan Lomax collection in the Library of Congress.   She served on the African and Caribbean Committee of the Seattle Art Museum.