About Bill Hoy



With 35 years of experience in hospice, congregation, bereavement center, and university, William G. (Bill) Hoy is now Clinical Professor of Medical Humanities at Baylor University in Waco, Texas where he has taught since 2012. Prior to his move to Texas, Dr. Hoy directed the counseling programs for Pathways Volunteer Hospice in Long Beach, California, a post he held for nearly 17 years. He is a widely-acclaimed speaker on issues related to death, end-of-life care, bereavement, and funerals; to learn more, email us.

In addition to his graduate education and counseling training, Dr. Hoy holds the Fellow in Thanatology (FT), the highest advance practice credential for counselors and educators in the fields of death and bereavement. For nearly 30 years, he has been a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (www.adec.org), an international association of more than 1,500 clinicians and educators working in end-of-life care and bereavement. From 2013 to 2020, Bill served on the ADEC board and completed two terms as the association’s treasurer.

Dr. Hoy’s area of scholarly interest for many years has been in better understanding the role played by the body in funeral rituals around the world and throughout history, and he is widely regarded as an authority on the role of the funeral in the grief process; his research findings are chronicled in Do Funerals Matter? The Purposes and Practices of Death Rituals in Global Perspective (Routledge, 2013). Bill’s newest book,
Bereavement Groups and the Role of Social Support: Integrating Theory, Research, and Practice, also published by Routledge (2016) identifies the factors that seem most important in providing social support to bereaved individuals and families. His research interest with students at Baylor is particularly concerned with examining the role poverty and ethnicity play in the social value accorded to death rituals and other end-of-life choices.

Bill and Debbie Hoy are parents to two young adults and a wonderful granddaughter. They make their home in rural central Texas about 25 miles from the Baylor campus and one of the joys of their life is regularly welcoming Bill's students to their ranch for dinner and fellowship.

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