
Warren Morgan ’06
Before classes had even started, Butler University had already changed Warren Morgan’s life. He’d volunteered for Ambassadors of Change, a pre-orientation program that focuses on leadership development.
“Those types of experiences, you just learned so much about yourself and so much about the world,” Morgan said.
For the next four years, Butler brought out his ability to lead. While he studied Psychology and Pre-med, he also ran an after-school program at what then was Shortridge Middle School. There, he came to realize that, “we need to invest in our children and begin to turn their lives around.”
As a senior, he served as President of the Student Government Association. He also had the opportunity to meet and introduce two speakers on campus that year, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. He told them he might go to medical school after he graduated from Butler. They suggested he consider government policy.
“To hear this from two United States presidents,” he said, “it really changed my trajectory.”
After graduation, the Chicago native earned a fellowship working on education policy for the Illinois Senate. He felt that if he wanted to make change, he had to get into the schools to know what was going on. He was accepted in Teach for America and spent the next two years teaching science in St. Louis and earning his master’s in leadership.
That led him to Chicago, where he rose through the ranks from teacher to department head to principal. But he wanted to affect change on a broader scale, so in 2014 he became an academic superintendent in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
Since then, he also has:
- Earned his doctorate in Urban Education Leadership from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- Was competitively selected and participated in the prestigious White House Fellows program under the Obama and Trump administrations. He was part of the 2016–2017 fellowship class.
- Been hired as the Executive Director for Teach For America in St. Louis.
Morgan said Butler changed his life. When he gets together with friends, “We always talk about how Butler formulated our thoughts. Butler shaped our beliefs in some ways and influenced us to be the leader that we were destined to be.”
Warren Morgan ’06
A leader then, and a leader now.
Related Stories

Butler Education Alumni Inspire New Major
BY Katie Grieze
PUBLISHED ON Oct 28 2019
When faculty in Butler University’s College of Education started hearing the stories of the many trailblazing graduates who have pursued youth-focused careers outside the classroom, they saw those paths forming a map for how to better serve future students.
“We really began to think, ‘How do we create a purposeful, intentional program to offer a valid and useful pathway for students who want to pursue careers working with young people in the community, but not within a traditional classroom setting?’” says Angela Lupton, a Senior Lecturer of Education.
This fall, COE launched the new non-licensure Youth and Community Development major as an answer to that question. Students in the pathway share foundational curriculum required for all COE majors, but they also choose from one of five interdisciplinary, community-focused intensive areas: Sociology with an emphasis in Social Work; Recreation and Sport Studies; Human Communication and Organizational Leadership; Arts Administration; or Entrepreneurship and Innovation. To finish out the major, all students complete full-time internships within youth-focused organizations related to their concentrations.
“We don’t see this at all as an alternative pathway for those who decide not to become teachers,” says Shelly Furuness, an Associate Professor of Education who worked with Lupton to develop the new major over the last four years. “It’s a pathway for you to see yourself as an educator, but not in the context of a traditional classroom.”
Furuness says each of the five intensive areas was inspired by the career paths of former students, from entering the field of social work, to pursuing student affairs roles within higher education, to serving youth through nonprofit work. Others have gone on to roles as professional school counselors, museum educators, and a variety of other youth-focused positions.
“We want to help broaden the concept of what educators do,” Furuness says. “Our vision for the COE is that we imagine a world where we are trying to push the status quo and help students see schools and communities as they could be.”
Building the curriculum involved listening to voices from across disciplines, and Lupton has already received ideas for ways to add more concentration options. It took a University to raise the major, and Lupton believes the program is all the stronger for it.
“I think the opportunity to work with colleagues across campus was a really powerful process,” she says. “I was amazed at the number of people who kept saying, ‘Oh my gosh, where was this when I was an undergrad?’”
Making Meaningful Connections
Amanda Murphy loves education. She loves working with young people. But she has never loved being in a classroom.
Murphy first applied to Butler as an English major, then switched to Exploratory before move-in day. From there, she bounced around to political science, communication, and education until the start of her Sophomore year. She knew she needed to settle on something soon, but nothing seemed to fit.
Then in fall 2018, Lupton visited one of Murphy’s COE core classes to announce the new Youth and Community Development major.
“I thought, Woah, this is exactly what I want,” Murphy says. “You have the ability to work with young people, to study educational theories and practices, while not having to be in a classroom.”
Now a student in the Human Communication and Organizational Leadership area of the Youth and Community Development major, Murphy says her favorite thing about the program is the freedom it allows for personalization, which let her satisfy most of her required credits with classes she’d taken before switching.
While Murphy still isn’t sure exactly what she wants to do after graduation, she knows she wants to work with high school students.
“I just think that’s such a cool age for young people,” she says. “They make these huge bounds in social and emotional development. But when I was in high school, I didn’t like any of my classes. I still did well in them, and I enjoy learning, but the most meaningful connections I made were with people outside the classroom.”
She says high schoolers need people who are dedicated to being there for them and guiding them, and she wants to be one of those people. She’s passionate about educational advocacy, especially when it comes to fighting for equitable testing practices or LGBTQ and gender rights within schools. She wants to advocate for these things, but she mostly wants to help young people become leaders in advocating for themselves.
“Once you give them a little taste of leadership, that’s going to stick with them throughout their entire lives,” she says. “It’s a stepping stone that they’ll remember and will actually use to make a change within their own lives and communities.”
From Camp to Career
At a recent Butler admissions visit, Lupton met with a high school senior who was interested in the COE. He said he planned to become a classroom teacher, so Lupton explained some details about Butler’s licensure programs.
And while I’ve got you here, she told him, let me tell you about the new Youth and Community Development major.
As she talked, Lupton watched the wide-eyed expressions of the student and his mom. They looked at Lupton, and then they looked at each other, and then they looked back at Lupton.
“I thought, ‘What is going on here? I clearly hit a button,’” she recalls.
Okay, I need to confess to you, the student said. Part of the reason I like working with young people is that when I was younger, I had the chance to be involved in an amazing camp program. Throughout high school, I’ve gone back every summer to be a counselor. I always thought teaching would be a good fit for me because I could work with young people during the school year but still have my summers to go back and be a part of that program.
He stood in shock because, for the first time, someone was telling him that working with youth in recreational settings could be a viable year-round job.
“It was just such an ‘aha’ moment for him and his mom,” Lupton says. “They were both like, ‘That’s what you are meant to do.’”
Lupton says people too often think that whatever they enjoy doing most can’t be a career.
“This major stands in the face of that and asks people to think about those experiences they have adored and would love to keep doing,” she says. “It’s very possible that this pathway could lead you there.”
Revealing a Path
Through launching a nonprofit organization and following his passion for working with youth through sports—all after realizing a traumatic brain injury would prevent him from teaching in a classroom—College of Education graduate Mark Spiegel helped inspire curriculum for Butler's new Youth and Community Development major.
As a soccer coach in Indianapolis and founder of the nonprofit organization Make Your Own Ball Day, Mark Spiegel gets to spend his days with kids who are just as excited to be there as he is. Back when he was student teaching in English classrooms, asking high schoolers to read the next chapter of Shakespeare, that wasn’t always the case.
Still, a career outside the classroom wasn’t always the plan for Spiegel, who graduated from Butler University in 2013 with majors in English and Secondary Education.
He first came to Butler from Lee's Summit, Missouri, not quite sure what to study. He just knew he wanted to play soccer and volunteer with kids—the rest would work itself out, he figured. So he took “the money route,” declaring majors in Business and Mandarin while spending the rest of his time either out on the field or mentoring youth in the community.
But everything changed during a soccer practice his sophomore year. A ball struck the back of his head, leaving an injury that has caused him daily headaches ever since. After another hit during a game the following season, Spiegel had to quit soccer and drop out of school.
“The head injury knocked me off this automated, sleepy track of what many people consider to be the American Dream,” he says. “But I was faced for the first time with figuring out what I was really passionate about.”
It took years—and a challenge from his therapist to find life through giving life to others—but Spiegel eventually went back to coaching soccer and volunteering with organizations that let him work with kids outdoors. He came back to Butler to finish his degree, this time in Education. And he graduated, but only after realizing while student teaching in his last semester that the chronic headaches would prevent him from ever working in a classroom.
“I was finding myself in situations where I had 32 kids looking at me, when I was in pain to the point where I needed to remove myself, but I didn’t have that ability,” he says.
He needed flexibility. He needed to take care of his health. But he also needed to follow his passion for making an impact on kids' lives.
Today, Spiegel works with the Indy-based youth soccer club Dynamo F.C., where he mentors kids and develops curriculum. He spends his evenings coaching young athletes from around the city.
“Coaching soccer has been the most appropriate and purest platform for me to advocate for the kids I want to reach,” he says. “I get to teach kids how to play soccer, but I also get to teach them important lessons of character and integrity.”
Whenever he’s not coaching, Spiegel works on Make Your Own Ball Day, the event-turned-nonprofit he first launched in 2012. The program serves children in two important ways, Spiegel says, helping kids in the United States appreciate what they have while providing resources for those in need.
At events where young people build their own soccer balls from materials like duct tape and crumpled newspaper, the organization teaches kids about thankfulness through showing them part of what it’s like to live in a developing nation. Spiegel also works to build soccer fields and establish youth camps in communities around the world, where he collaborates with schools and orphanages to promote mentorship, leadership, education, and gender equality.
The organization not only allows Spiegel to work with kids in his own way—it will change lives for students at Butler, where Education faculty say Spiegel’s story helped inspire the Entrepreneurship and Innovation track within the new Youth and Community Development major.
“It’s cool to hear that the College of Education is moving toward a broader view of impacting kids through any means necessary,” Spiegel says, “whether that’s through sports, mentorship programs, or teaching in a traditional classroom. When I heard that, I was like, ‘Yep. That’s what I would have done if I was at Butler right now.’ I would have eaten that up.”
Media Contact:
Katie Grieze
News Content Manager
kgrieze@butler.edu
260-307-3403 (cell)
Innovations in Teaching and Learning
One of the distinguishing features of a Butler education has always been the meaningful and enduring relationships between our faculty and students. Gifts to this pillar during Butler Beyond will accelerate our commitment to investing in faculty excellence by adding endowed positions, supporting faculty scholarship and research, renovating and expanding state-of-the-art teaching facilities, and more. Learn more, make a gift, and read other stories like this one at beyond.butler.edu.

Butler Education Alumni Inspire New Major
Youth & Community Development major offers path for students who want to work with youth outside the classroom.
Youth & Community Development major offers path for students who want to work with youth outside the classroom.

Visiting Writing Series Announces Spring Speakers
BY
PUBLISHED ON Dec 04 2017
Series begins February 1 with Kazim Ali.
Novelist/biographer Edmund White and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück will be among the speakers this spring in Butler University’s Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series.
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.
All events in the spring 2018 series are free and open to the public without tickets. For more information, call 317-940-9861.
More information about each speaker follows.
Kazim Ali
Thursday, February 1, 7:30 PM
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Kazim Ali’s books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon. He has received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and his poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry. His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet, and among his books of essays is Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice.
Ali is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College. His new book of poems, Inquisition, and a new hybrid memoir, Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies, are scheduled for release in 2018.
Ali Eteraz
Thursday, February 15, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Ali Eteraz is the author of the debut novel Native Believer, a New York TimesBook Review Editors’ Choice selection. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Children of Dust, which was selected as a New Statesman Book of the Year, won the Nautilus Book Award Gold, and was featured on PBS with Tavis Smiley, NPR with Terry Gross, C-SPAN2, and numerous international outlets. O, The Oprah Magazine, called it “a picaresque journey” and the book was long-listed for the Asian American Writers Workshop Award.
Previously, he wrote the short story collection Falsipedies and Fibsiennes. Other short stories have appeared in The Adirondack Review, storySouth, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Forge Journal.
Eteraz is an accomplished essayist and has been spotlighted by Time Magazine and Pageturner, the literary blog of The New Yorker.
Danez Smith
Thursday, March 22, 7:30 PM
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (2017), finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; [insert] Boy (2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; and the chapbook hands on ya knees. Their writing has appeared in many magazines and journals, such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Kinfolks. Smith is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam finalist and the reigning two-time Rustbelt Individual Champion and was on the 2014 championship team Sad Boy Supper Club.
In 2014, they were the festival director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam and were awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Edmund White
Tuesday, April 3, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Edmund White is America’s preeminent gay writer. In biography, social history, travel writing, journalism, the short story, and the novel, this prolific and versatile author has chronicled the gay experience in the United States from the closeted 1950s through the AIDS crisis and beyond.
His first novel, Forgetting Elena, published in 1973, is the story of an amnesia victim, set at a stylish resort reminiscent of Fire Island. With the classic coming-of-age tale A Boy’s Own Story, White cemented a place for himself—and for gay fiction—in the cultural consciousness. His celebrated fiction also includes Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Caracole, The Beautiful Room Is Empty (winner of the 1988 Lambda Literary Award), The Farewell Symphony, The Married Man, Fanny: A Fiction, Hotel de Dream, and Jack Holmes and His Friend. His latest is Our Young Man.
White has been involved in the gay rights movement since the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 and has acted as one of its canniest observers. His pioneering The Joy of Gay Sex: An Intimate Guide for Gay Men to the Pleasures of a Gay Lifestyle was published in 1977 and served as a national coming-out announcement for the entire gay community.
White has also made his mark as a highly accomplished biographer. Genet: A Biography is recognized as a definitive work on writer and playwright Jean Genet, and in 1993 it won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award. White also authored the well-received Marcel Proust and Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel. His memoir Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris recounts the fifteen years he spent living there—one of the most productive and creative phases in his career.
White is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, and Vanity Fair, and is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Louise Glück
Wednesday, April 18, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Louise Glück is the author of twelve books of poetry and served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003-2004. In 1993 Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection The Wild Iris. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other honors include the Academy of American Poets Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Bobbitt National Poetry Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her most recent book of poems Faithful and Virtuous Nightxs received the 2014 National Book Award. Her book of essays Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994) was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction, and her book Vita Nova (2001) won the first New YorkerReaders Award. In 2001 Yale University recognized her lifetime achievement by awarding her its Bollingen Prize for Poetry.
Glück is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and currently serves as the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at Yale University.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

Visiting Writing Series Announces Spring Speakers
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), Barry (March 1), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), Barry (March 1), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.

At Clowes Hall, Lugar and Hamilton Discuss Civility
BY
PUBLISHED ON Nov 14 2017
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.
Speaking in front of about 700 people November 13, as part of Butler University’s Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series, the two political leaders agreed that you can’t get much done in an uncivil atmosphere.
Lugar, a Republican, told a story about serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and how the chair, whether a Republican or Democrat, strived for a unanimous vote.
“The rest of the world was looking at the committee to come up with a 19-0 vote, not a 10-9 vote,” Lugar said. “If we came to a 19-0, the rest of the world would know that we meant business.”
Reaching a 19-0 vote “would take time and require a lot of civility,” he said.
Hamilton, a Democrat, reminded the audience about the way former President Ronald Reagan and former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used humor to diffuse tense situations.
“The level of discourse every now and then would become intense as you discussed difficult problems, but I do not ever recall the meetings becoming uncivil,” he said.
Hamilton said Reagan’s modus operandi would be to hand you a jar of jellybeans and ask you to pick one out. Then he’d psychoanalyze you based on the color you picked.
O’Neill, meanwhile, always told an Irish story.
“They both had a marvelous human touch, and they always tried to end a meeting with a touch of lightness,” Hamilton said.
This was the second event in the 2017-2018 Diversity Lecture Series. The series kicked off in October with David “Olmeca” Barragan, a bilingual hip-hop artist and producer. Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington will present “Diversity and Leadership in the 21st Century” on January 24. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a world-renowned presidential historian, will present “Where Do We Go from Here: Leadership in Turbulent Times” on February 12. Ellen Hume, a veteran teacher, journalist and civic activist, concludes the series with “Media and Politics: Finding a Useful Path” on March 6.
At this lecture, Lugar, the longest-serving member of Congress in Indiana history (1976-2012), and Hamilton, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965-1999, were joined onstage by Ivy Tech President and former Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann, who served as moderator. When Ellspermann asked the audience whether people came to the event because they thought today’s political atmosphere was uncivil, most of the audience members raised their hands.
Hamilton said sometimes problems are insurmountable, but ultimately, you’ve got to be pragmatic.
“I think the greatest political skill that’s needed today is the skill to build a consensus behind the remedy for a problem,” he said. “It’s very easy to go into a room where you have disparate opinions and blow it apart…. What’s really hard is to go into a room where you have disparate opinions and bring people together.”
Lugar said the public can help the process by learning public speaking and how to frame an argument concisely. He suggested that students write for their school newspaper and participate in debate.
“Civility requires preparation,” he said. “Economy with use of language as opposed to babbling on and on and on.”
Hamilton said the public needs to hold public officials accountable.
“Some of those people who claim to be the most bipartisan have a 99 or 98 percent record of support for their party,” he said. “Now, come on. Hold them accountable. That’s your job.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

At Clowes Hall, Lugar and Hamilton Discuss Civility
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.