Dear Campus Community –
We write to share the sad news that Donna S. Weimer, Professor Emerita of Communication, passed away yesterday, January 8, 2025. Dr. Weimer served as a faculty member for 33 years, joining the faculty in 1990 and retiring in 2023. In 2000, she was named the Thornbury Professor of Communication. She was recognized for her excellence in teaching by Juniata in 1993 and she received the Beachley Award for Distinguished Academic Service in 2003. And she was honored three times by the Pennsylvania Communication Association with the Robert T. Oliver Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 and the Carroll Arnold Service Award in both 2002 and 2019, the only person to receive that recognition twice. You can read more about Donna’s extraordinary legacy here:
Donna was a faculty and campus leader in both formal and informal ways throughout her tenure given her dedication and devotion to Juniata. She was a talented rhetorician, an unabashed enthusiast for the liberal arts, a dogged advocate for faculty colleagues, and she was fiercely loyal to the dedicated staff who serve Juniata. Yet her greatest passion was the teaching, mentoring, and advising that she provided to scores of students over the years. In creating the Donna Weimer award in 2023 on the occasion of her retirement, these criteria were established:
To honor her passion for the field of Communication and for her students, members of the department will give the Donna S. Weimer Award to one or more outstanding junior and/or senior students who offer creative and positive contributions to the field of communication through their curricular and cocurricular activities, embody a love of ideas and spirit of generosity, as well as a willingness to ask and explore challenging questions.
We cannot think of a more fitting description of Donna’s life and career…a love of ideas matched by boundless curiosity and framed in a spirit of generosity. All of it was in the service of students.
Services to remember Donna, including one on campus, are still being planned. We will share those details as they become available. In the meantime, remembrances and condolences can be sent to the family in care of Donna’s sister:
Georgie Najarian, 4201 Lakeside Drive, Coplay, PA 18037
We know you join us in expressing our sympathy to Donna’s family and to her many friends and former students. Our gratitude for Donna’s deep and abiding commitment to Juniata and to the success of all our students will be conveyed as well.
Lauren Bowen, Ph.D. – Provost
James A. Troha, Ph.D. – President
