The Whitten Maher Memorial Scholarship for Writing and Design

The Whitten Maher Memorial Scholarship for Writing and Design invites submissions for the 2022 competition. Established to acknowledge and support undergraduate work that conveys the compassion, intensity, and well-informed reason of its namesake, the scholarship is open to students in all James Madison fields of study. 

This past year, SMAD students Ken Kensky and Ashlyn Cambell joined a select group of Whitten Maher Memorial Scholarship recipients.

In his project titled “Gender-Neutral Bathrooms at James Madison University,” Kensky accepted Professor Nan Zheng’s challenge to turn a need among JMU students into a design question. His fascinating piece explores user-experience design as it affects a marginalized population.

In her Breeze article titled “Community Organizes Against Middle River Jail,” Campbell illuminated the ways that over-incarceration can affect a community. As Campbell noted, “It’s easy to overlook those who are incarcerated, but I wanted to shed light on how our friends, neighbors, and families are impacted. I wanted to show how political policies can impact and create suffering for those living right next door. I wanted to bring the issue to the JMU community and show students how they can make a difference in our area.”

Like the JMU sophomores, juniors, and returning seniors awarded Whitten Maher Memorial Scholarships since the scholarship’s inception in 2013, Kensky and Campbell embraced and furthered Maher’s commitment to promoting empathy and to encouraging populations who feel unrecognized or misunderstood.

The Whitten Maher Memorial Scholarship is open to ALL returning full- or part-time James Madison University undergraduate students in ALL academic disciplines. Each scholarship recipient is awarded at least $1,000 toward the following year's tuition. For more information and to apply for the scholarship, visit the scholarship's Submission Guidelines page.