Project Title: Institutional Decisions of How to Carry On After a Campus Tragedy: An Examination of Campus-Based Memorials, Structures, and Commemorative Spaces

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“The original purpose of this project was to learn more about how higher education institutions remember times of campus and community crisis through the design and construction of physical memorial structures. In today’s news cycles, college campuses are often at the center of recent or developing tragedies. As the details of the latest campus tragedy–its inception, development, and impact—are digested by the general public, the campus community at the center of a tragedy is busy making sense of its “new normal” (Hemphill & Leblanc, 2010; McNamee & Diamond, 2004). Often, the first steps toward settling into the new normal for a campus community entail working through the gravity of recent events, which includes a need for internal reflection, external processing, and collective healing. Campus communities engaged in this process often find a way to memorialize the events that have shaken them and to honor the lives of any community members lost to tragedy. My research project focuses on physical memorials that are the result of a tragic moment in institutional history.”

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Mahauganee Shaw Bonds is an experienced higher education professional, having served as both a student affairs administrator and graduate faculty member. She worked on multiple campuses, most recently in a tenure-track position within the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University (OH). Before joining the faculty at Miami, she worked in the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, helping to administer and report on various annual surveys, include the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Directly prior to her time in Indiana, she was the Assistant Dean and Director for the Office of Student Engagement and Leadership Development at Dillard University, helping that institution sustain and recover from the impacts of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Shaw Bonds conducts research on crisis management practices and outcomes in higher education and student affairs, examining leadership decisions, resultant organizational changes, and the recovery process. She has developed and instructed coursework in this area, led professional development workshops and trainings, and disseminated her research findings through keynote addresses, publications, and presentations. Her commitment to this scholarship was recognized with ACPA’s Emerging Scholar award and supported in a fellowship through the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP).

She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and her Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University.

Resource from Mahauganee:

• SCUP Fellow research report
• “Designing for Remembrance, Learning, & Healing: How Campuses Memorialize Tragic Events”
  Learning By Design
• “Create healing spaces when tragedy strikes on campus”
  Dean & Provost, January 2020