Dr. Morris Marx
Chairman & President
Dr. Morris L. Marx began his academic career at Vanderbilt University, where he served as Associate Professor of Mathematics and Director of Graduate Studies in Mathematics.
In 1977, he became Chairman of the Department and Professor of Mathematics at The University of Oklahoma.
He later became Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, and then Interim Dean. He moved from the University of Oklahoma to be the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. He became the third president of The University of West Florida (UWF) on February 15, 1988. On July 15, 2002, he relinquished his role as president and became Trustees Professor and President Emeritus. Since that time, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics until his retirement in 2016.
Dr. Marx received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mathematics from Tulane University. After completing his doctoral degree, Dr. Marx served in the U.S. Army as staff officer to the U.S. Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development and then as research mathematician assigned to the National Security Agency.
He is the author of almost two-dozen articles and four books in his areas of academic expertise. He has served as consultant to the National Security Agency, the Institute for Defense Analysis, Science Applications, Inc., and the Supercomputing Research Center of the University of Maryland.
As president of UWF, in 198, he established a relationship with the Jikei Group of Technical Colleges in Osaka, Japan. This relationship enabled numerous visits of UWF faculty, administrators, and students to Japan. It also provided instances for UWF to host visits from Japanese faculty and students and to create a Japan Center at the University. He served as Chairman of the Board and President of the Japan America Society of Northwest Florida from 2005 to 2011 and Director of the Florida-Japan Linkage Institute during that same time. In 2004 the Emperor of Japan and the Prime Minister awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, the highest award given by the Japanese Government to non-Japanese.