As the first college graduate from a sharecropping family in rural Alabama, David Wilson came to regard education as the country's most powerful agent for change.

That faith has fueled Wilson's actions throughout his steady ascent as a leader of universities. The next president of Morgan State believes in research not simply for its own sake, but as a tool to solve problems in America's struggling communities, urban and rural.

At Rutgers University, he helped to earn a community empowerment grant that spurred development in Camden, N.J. At Auburn University, he reworked the tenure program to benefit faculty who addressed community problems with their research. In Wisconsin, he beefed up degree offerings for working adults and extended 4-H programs traditionally reserved for rural communities to urban centers.

"He just lives and breathes outreach," said Renee Middleton, a former colleague at Auburn who chairs the education department at Ohio University.

Wilson, currently chancellor of the Wisconsin university system's two-year colleges and the state's extension service, hopes to do the same kind of work at Morgan.