The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) remembers Dr. Ernest Morrell, a renowned literary scholar and a former member of the CAL Board of Trustees. Dr. Morrell passed away after a long battle with cancer on February 4, 2026, surrounded by his family.
At CAL, he served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 2021 to 2023, sharing his insight into literacy as a means of empowering young people to access information and supporting educators and students, particularly those in historically underserved by educational systems.
“We were honored when Dr. Ernest Morrell agreed to join us on the Board of Trustees. His extensive experience with literacy was acutely relevant to CAL’s mission,” said CAL Board of Trustees Chair Ester J. de Jong. “Personally, I really appreciated his invitation to think creatively and challenged those around him to venture outside the traditional boxes of what is possible.”
Dr. Morrell was a well-respected leader in English education, the African Diaspora, and media and popular culture. Most recently, Dr. Morrell was a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame in its English and Africana studies departments and the director of the Center for Literacy Education in the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI), and he served five years as the College of Arts & Letters’ associate dean for the humanities and faculty development.
Before Notre Dame, he held faculty appointments at Columbia University’s Teachers College; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Michigan State University.
Dr. Morrell was influential in his field with more than 11,000 scholarly citations. He also wrote more than 100 articles, research briefs and book chapters, and wrote or edited 17 scholarly books.
His long list of honors and recognitions includes being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the American Education Research Association. From 2015, he was consistently among the top 200 university-based education scholars in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by EdWeek.
Morrell is survived by his wife, Jodene Morrell, and their three sons, Skip, Antonio, and Tripp.
