Lucy Shields Morgan, daughter of UT President Harcourt Morgan, received the BA in biology from UT in 1922 (while her father was UT president) and the MS in biology in 1932. She received an MA from Columbia University in 1929 and the PhD from Yale in 1938. She began a program in community health in Hartford, Connecticut, which became a model for others throughout the country. In her pioneering efforts, African Americans were included as active participants in the administration of the program.
In 1941 Morgan joined the Public Health Service. In 1942 she went to the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and by 1943 had developed a curriculum for the nation’s first Department of Health Education, in which 25 master’s students were enrolled. Morgan traveled extensively as a consultant on health projects for the World Health Organization to Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Among her many awards are the Elizabeth Severance Prentiss National Award in Health Education (1955) and the William B. Rankin Award of the North Carolina Public Health Association (1969). She was awarded the honorary ScD by the University of North Carolina in 1976, and in 1987 the University of North Carolina created the Lucy Morgan Fellowship Award. Lucy Shields Morgan has been inducted into the UT Knoxville Alumni Academic Hall of Fame.