Maegan Parker Brooks, Associate Professor and Chair of the Civic Communication and Media Department, has been named one of thirteen faculty recipients of the 2025 Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Awards in the Humanities. This prestigious award, issued by the American Council of Learned Societies, recognizes outstanding early career faculty at institutions on the West Coast.
The award will fund Professor Brooks's international travel as she deepens her expertise in grief and the expressive arts. Through this generous grant, she will present at workshops and conferences, collaborate with university leaders who organize campus grief support services, and complete a certification program in Grief Therapy for Non-Death Loss.
Professor Brooks's advanced training in grief, expressive arts, and community wellbeing already informs her teaching and her leadership of Willamette's Diversity of Loss art-based grief support group. Activities funded by the Graves grant will further enhance the expressive arts approaches she incorporates into her classes and campus grief support initiatives. Additionally, the grant will support the development of a new course, "Artful Communication for Wellbeing," and the completion of a peer-reviewed scholarly article.
