Peggy P Whiting

Peggy Whiting, Ed.D., is a professor and coordinator in the Counselor Education Program at North Carolina Central University. Professor Whiting earned a doctorate in Human Development Counseling from Vanderbilt University in 1986 and has been a counselor educator since that time.  She remained at Vanderbilt on the faculty for multiple years (1986–1993) and served at Winthrop University in SC (1994–2006) before coming to NCCU in 2006.   

She is also a licensed clinical mental health counselor supervisor, a licensed K-12 school counselor, a fellow in thanatology (grief counseling and education), and the recipient of the 2016 University of North Carolina Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award. She created and implemented graduate campus and distance education courses in grief, trauma and crisis counseling that are now required in the clinical curricula of the three universities where she served.  NCCU has required courses in these areas for both clinical mental health and school counselors-in-training.

In addition to her university career, she has maintained a small counseling and supervision practice for the past 25+ years.  The scope of her clinical practice is individuals and families coping with grief and trauma. She supervises counselors who have a focus in bereavement service within hospice and hospital oncology divisions.  Professor Whiting has consulted with many agencies and schools around loss situations and has served within disaster relief and school crisis programming and intervention. Additionally, she has previous work experience as a psychiatric hospital therapist, an employee assistance counselor, and a university career counselor.

Her research and clinical practice area is crisis, trauma, and grief counseling. Her journey as a developing thanatologist formally began in 1984 with a two-year doctoral internship assignment through Vanderbilt Hospital Pastoral Care counseling hematology patients and their families. She was profoundly moved by the often-neglected needs of the bereaved and those providing care to them.  This shaped a career focus toward grief counseling, research, and education.

She is the vice president of the international, multicultural, and multidisciplinary Association for Death Education & Counseling (2020–21) and president-elect for 2021–2022.  This organization's mission is “promoting excellence and recognizing diversity in death education, care of the dying, grief counseling and research in thanatology”.

Professor Whiting’s research interests are in the areas of thanatology and other loss experiences, grief education, and the application of narrative constructivist approaches to clinical intervention.  A secondary interest is in counselor clinical supervision.

Currently, she is a co-investigator of two studies: a national study examining grief education in accredited counselor education programs and a qualitative study with a counseling colleague on how NCCU students with an incarcerated family member might experience ambiguous/disenfranchised grief.  Additionally, she is co-authoring a manuscript on what clinicians need to know to be competent as grief counselors.