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Morris W.H. Collins Jr., a former university faculty member who was the first director of the Institute of Government, died Oct. 15 in Athens.
Collins, 83, was a faculty member in political science from 1946 to 1973. He was director of the Bureau of Public Administration, which was merged with the Institute of Law and Government to create the Institute of Government. He was the institute’s first director, serving from 1957 to 1973.
Collins helped develop the proposal that won the $2 million grant from the Kellogg Foundation that established the Georgia Center for continuing Education in 1954. He was an associate director of the center from 1954 to 1957.
He worked closely with Georgia governors and state officials in the 1950s and ’60s to implement far-reaching changes in state government. He was executive director of Gov. Carl Sanders’s Commission on Efficiency and Improvement in Government and director of Gov. Ernest Vandiver’s Economy and Reorganization Commission. He was also an adviser to Gov. Jimmy Carter.
In 1973, Collins left UGA to become dean of the College of Public Affairs at American University. Four years later, he joined Mississippi State University as founding director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and holder of the Stennis Chair in Political Science. He returned to Athens after retiring.
The Institute of Government and the political science department have created the Morris W.H. Collins Jr. Distinguished Practitioner Lecture Program in his honor.
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