• Program Manager and Professor of the Practice, Maritime Business Administration Program
Dr. Robert Morrison, Program Manager and Professor of the Practice, Maritime Business Administration Program

Industry Experience

  • Dr. Morrison comes to Texas A&M with eighteen years of experience teaching in higher education. He earned a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where he completed all required coursework for two concentrations, Management and Finance, with supporting coursework in international business and had a co-chaired dissertation committee. His first Ph.D. is in Technology Management with a specialization in Manufacturing Systems from Indiana State University. He earned an MBA, a Master of Science in Industrial Technology, and a Master of Science in Information Systems from Morehead State University, as well as a Master of Science in Accounting from Texas A&M University Commerce. His Bachelor of Science and an Associate of Science degrees are from Eastern Kentucky University.

    Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Morrison had a successful entrepreneurial career spanning over twenty years. He began taking on management roles in his family’s construction company during high school and continues to serve on the board of directors. Expanding on ventures related to manufacturing technologies started in the US, he founded a born-global firm operating out of a Free Trade Zone in Honduras. The firm imported industry equipment, technology, and consumables from multiple countries and distributed them in Central America and provided and supported software, computer networking, and shop-floor automation to the offshore factories (maquilas) manufacturing for US multinational corporations when the Caribbean Basin Initiative and NAFTA caused the shift of US manufacturing to Central American and Mexico. The client list included the largest US apparel manufacturers and some automotive component firms. He personally wrote software to handle the gross-to-net payroll, as well as government reporting requirements for free trade zone firms in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. He has owned commercial and residential rental properties for over thirty years, is a founding shareholder of a community bank, has worked as a flight instructor and commercial pilot and holds commercial pilot licenses in both the US and Honduras. Starting his senior year of college, he worked as a police officer and paramedic and he and his family’s philanthropic pursuits include building schools and clinics throughout Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean Basin as well as responding to hurricanes and other disasters relief efforts in the US and abroad since the 1970s.