Morgan’s guiding vision is to shape new practices and alternative economic development frameworks that prioritize the holistic well-being of residents.

Morgan Fett is a PhD candidate in Urban and Regional Planning working to advance equitable development. Morgan saw how her family and the communities around her had been impacted by urban planning issues that led to lack of accessible transportation, job opportunities, and affordable housing, and this ultimately motivated her to pursue a PhD and address systemic issues in planning and policy. Now at the University of Michigan, Morgan has dedicated herself to studying planning that prioritizes people’s well-being over growth and profit.

Morgan is committed to pursuing equity both personally and professionally. She has served as a Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) co-steward for several years and, in the fall of 2020, helped to organize her colleagues for a safer, abolitionist campus. She was pregnant at the time and became a parent in the spring of 2021, going on to finish her coursework, pass her comprehensive exams, and defend her dissertation proposal in her child’s first months. Morgan’s persistence has never wavered: when COVID then continued to disrupt her original research and fieldwork plans, she redesigned her dissertation and pressed forward. Her current research focuses on understanding how Ecuador adopted and implemented a new constitution framed around well-being.

Morgan’s professors describe her as a rising major scholar in equity planning who has demonstrated remarkable “seriousness, humility, and strength” through daunting setbacks. Morgan has also been recognized and supported with a Rackham International Research Award, a Public Engagement Fellowship, and a Public Scholarship Grant. Going forward, Morgan’s guiding vision is to shape new practices and alternative economic development frameworks that prioritize the holistic well-being of residents. She hopes to teach future practitioners as a professor and apply her expertise as a consultant for governments and multinational development organizations.

CEW+ commends Morgan’s persistence and commitment to equitable development and names her a Grace A. and James D. Bruce Community Engagement Scholar.