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Learn, Earn, Return

Life sciences alumnus David Morley believes it all starts with education

When David Morley was a young executive just starting out in biopharmaceuticals, his company encouraged him to be involved in his community. At the time, he and his wife Cheryl were also considering having children, so the decision on how to give back became a personal one.

“My wife and I said, ‘What does this mean? What is it we are really trying to do as parents?’” Morley says. “And we said that there are certain things that you can do as a parent: You can create a loving, stable environment, which builds confidence and good people, and you can provide an education, which gives children the tools to do something with that foundation. I said to myself at that time, ‘Why does it need to be limited to your kids?’ So I’ve been involved in education, particularly inner-city education, ever since—for well over 20 years.”

Morley graduated from Indiana University in 1978, a biological sciences major with a passion for business. Throughout his successful three-decade career in the life sciences, Morley always appreciated the educational foundation IU provided during his four years in Bloomington—and today, he returns the favor to the university through philanthropy, consultation, and leadership. Entirely voluntary, his work on behalf of IU represents one of the university’s most important hidden assets: an active alumni community that cares about the current state of an Indiana University education.

IU has the third-most living graduates of any college and university in America, and the assistance of its alumni—whether through teaching, coordinating internships, or simply giving money for specific scholarships—is a crucial part of IU’s academic environment. Morley himself sits on the Dean’s Advisory Board for the College of Arts and Sciences, and returned last year to speak with IU students on the importance of balancing career, family, and community.

For his part, Morley sees giving back to IU to be a natural element of his corporate career. As a student at IU in the late 1970s, Morley initially planned to use his major in the biological sciences as a platform for entering medical school. But an economics class in money and banking changed his path and his future occupation.

“I finished most of my science requirements very early in my college career, and I started taking economics—and I fell in love with it,” Morley says. “So I decided to go to business school instead. One of the advantages of a liberal-arts education is you get the chance to experiment.”

After graduation, Morley obtained a business degree from Purdue, and began working in finance for the Ford Motor Company. He quickly moved to a pharmaceutical company where his duties would more directly involve his scientific background and skills. After an acquisition, he began to climb in the executive ranks at Monsanto, the multinational biopharmaceutical firm, where he also started upon his philanthropic career.

“I first became involved in education in the city of Chicago, and then when I got transferred, in St. Louis,” Morley says. Two of the organizations that have benefited from Morley’s involvement include Parents As Teachers and the Wyman Center.

“Parents as Teachers deals with all sorts of children, but including children that don’t have the advantages that others may have,” Morley says of the national nonprofit based in a suburb of St. Louis. A member of Parents As Teachers’ board of directors, Morley helps guide the organization’s efforts to ensure that all parents have access to child development information and parenting support. The nonprofit’s aim is to improve children’s chances for lifetime success by improving their parents’ ability to care, nurture, and educate them throughout their childhoods.

Morley is also the board chairman of The Wyman Center, a youth-development organization that prepares teens from disadvantaged backgrounds for successful careers and lives. The center’s focus is on programs that will teach young people, beginning in the eighth grade, the basics of stable relationships, citizenship, and healthy decisionmaking. “It’s a five-year leadership program for young people,” he says. “It teaches them first to be a leader of themselves, and then a leader of their peers, and then hopefully leaders of their community.”

To extend the program’s vision beyond high school, the Morleys devised a scholarship program at Indiana University that is currently allowing two Wyman Center graduates to pursue their academic dreams in Bloomington. With monies provided by the IU College of Arts and Sciences backed up with corporate and private donations, the scholarship program is proving such a success that Morley is working on expanding it to other Missouri and Illinois schools. The first Wyman Center graduate is scheduled to earn an IU degree in 2011.

Along with David’s work on the Dean’s Advisory Board, David and Cheryl Morley contribute directly to the effectiveness of one of the IU College of Arts and Sciences’ most innovative programs, the Liberal Arts and Management Program (LAMP). “I was really impressed with what LAMP Director Jim Madison was trying to do with the program,” Morley says. “Similar to my own experiences in trying to bring the arts and sciences to the business world, I thought that LAMP was just an outstanding program in developing the broad thinking of a liberal-arts education with enough business acumen to have a good start in the business world.”

The David and Cheryl Morley Internship is awarded to a LAMP student working in a summer internship at a nonprofit organization. “My son was entering college, so I said I’d like to do something in the four years that he’s there that makes a more permanent difference,” Morley says. “And so we filled this endowment. It’s only for kids working in a not-for-profit, and the director decides on the student and the agency.”

The first Morley Internship was awarded in 2008 to Katie Lilly for her summer position with the Timmy Foundation, an Indianapolis nonprofit that develops and assists sustainable health projects in developing countries. Lilly, the donations chair for the Timmy Foundation’s IU chapter, used the funds to travel to the Dominican Republic, where she spent the summer working directly with medical providers in administering medication, transporting patients and caring for babies and expectant mothers.

Along with their work in supporting students financially, David and Cheryl Morley have given back directly by sharing their expertise with IU students. In 2008, they came to IU to speak to LAMP students at a Leadership Lunch, and came away impressed. “They’re incredible kids,” Morley says. “They were very engaging. We spent two hours just basically answering questions—we didn’t have more than five minutes of introduction, because we were more interested in what they wanted to hear than in what we wanted to say.”

Although he did not benefit from a program like LAMP during his time at IU, Morley sees the program as something that parallels the blend of science and business that has marked his career. He also appreciated the high academic rigor maintained by the program.

“I was impressed with the diversity of the academics within the LAMP group as well as with the caliber of the students. And the idea that these kids can benefit from each other from such diverse backgrounds, as well as academic interests, with business being the uniting theme, I think was a powerful experience for us.”