Taladay-Carter’s research supports grieving individuals, facilitates student success

For Assistant Professor Cassidy Taladay-Carter from the Department of Communication, research is about two things: making new discoveries and finding ways to give back to the people and communities who made those discoveries possible.

Taladay-Carter studies and teaches about how we tell stories - to ourselves and others - to help us make sense of loss and grief. Her work explores the ways we recover from the loss of close friends or family members, but also non-death related grief like chronic illness or injury.

As a communication researcher, Taladay-Carter has a lot in common with other social scientists in sociology and psychology. It is the object of study that sets her work apart.

"Rather than looking on the inside of the brain, as in psychology, or even at the systems and the structures, as in sociology, we're really looking at the relationship, the interaction, the communication happening within and between people who are speaking to each other, who are interacting in verbal and nonverbal ways," she said.

Taladay-Carter collects data through carefully-prepared interviews, then analyzes that information for recurring themes. One recent paper, published while Taladay-Carter was finishing her doctorate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, explored the ways end-of-life care helps both terminal patients and their grieving families come to terms with loss.

That paper and others have immediate implications for practitioners, so Taladay-Carter works closely with healthcare professionals. In her first year on faculty at Boise State, she has already started building those connections locally. She is eager for collaboration across departments and has looked outside campus to work with physicians at St. Luke's hospital and members of the Idaho Caregiver Alliance.

Taladay-Carter's work doesn't stop when the results come in. She is always looking for ways to support the subjects of her research - the people whose experiences make communication research possible.

"I care deeply about community-based research that focuses on the lived experiences and the stories of individuals and communities," she said. "And the ways that research can give back to them - not just taking information from communities."

That spirit of reciprocation will make a difference right here on the Boise State campus. Taladay-Carter hopes to work with University Health Services to train faculty to support students who are grieving. Her previous research on supporting grieving students on university campuses, including developing research-backed interventions for them, has supported this work.

Taladay-Carter joined the faculty in fall 2025, but she's already hit the ground running. In addition to her own research, she facilitates opportunities for student research in the Department of Communication. One of her students, Haley Gomes, won an Institute for Inclusive and Transformative Scholarship undergraduate research scholarship this spring. Gomes is studying how children's literature represents communication about grief and loss.

Taladay-Carter said, "I've gotten that opportunity to be really involved in my first year here at Boise State, and I'd like to continue that trajectory."

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