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This gift honors the legacy of Dr. Ann Weaver Nichols, an academic leader focused on the power of people to create change. Her reach as a professor at the ASU School of Social Work included work on restorative justice, people making policy and the role of forgiveness in public policy. She co-authored Initiating Change in Organizations and Communities and her final major research and writing was on the macro-concepts of forgiveness and how to help nations transform after traumatic conflicts with possible forgiveness structures and exercises for organizations, communities and nations.

Dr. Nichols served as the director of the ASU School of Social Work, Tucson Component from 1978-2008, spent two sabbaticals working on community organization in Uganda, and was president of the Social Work and Spirituality Network. After retirement, she spent two years on faculty at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation teaching social work in Zambia. She was awarded Social Worker of the Year by NASW, presented a lifetime achievement award by the ASU School of Social Work, awarded Woman on the Move by the YWCA, won the national Jefferson Award and in 2022, fourteen years after retirement, she received the Advocacy Award from the Center for Economic Integrity in recognition of her decade of advocacy for kinship care.

As a scholarship student herself, she created this scholarship to support students pursuing careers in social work. Recipients are Master of Social Work students with financial need, especially those raising children as single parents/grandparents and who are committed to social change — continuing her legacy to create strong and healthy communities.