Meg Freeman Whalen is Director of Communications & External Relations for the College of Arts + Architecture. Before joining the College of Arts + Architecture, Whalen served as the Director of Public Relations and Community Engagement for the Charlotte Symphony. Prior to joining the Symphony, she was a freelance arts writer for the Charlotte Observer, Charlotte Viewpoint, and Classical Voice North Carolina and the arts editor for Charlotte Magazine. Whalen is the author of a short history of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, The Sound of Charlotte: The First 75 Years of the Charlotte Symphony, and contributed the Foreword for North Carolina Musicians: Photographs and Conversations by Daniel Coston (McFarland Press, 2013), in addition to academic papers published in the Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians, The Journal of the Conductors' Guild, and Women of Note Quarterly. She is co-PI on the 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Research Grant, “Arts-based social mobility: Exploring cultural capital in Charlotte, N.C.” Whalen is the University representative on the Board of Directors for WFAE 90.7FM and the Arts & Science Council Cultural Sector Advisory Council.