Melissa Ansley Brooks

Meet Melissa

Melissa Brooks is the Program Director of Legal Studies at Campus, where she designed the AI-integrated curriculum from the ground up, leads faculty development, and teaches. She believes legal education should prepare students not simply to know the law, but to think critically, exercise sound judgment, and take seriously the promise of liberty and justice for all.

Melissa knows firsthand what a community college can do. The only child of a single mother, she began at North Iowa Area Community College and credits that experience with changing the trajectory of her life. It continues to shape her belief in rigorous, accessible education that recognizes talent wherever it begins.

Before entering higher education, she worked in mergers and acquisitions and SEC compliance and has served as a retained legal operations consultant since 2004. Before joining Campus, she was Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Virginia Community College System and was named Instructor of the Year in 2021.

Outside the classroom, Melissa is a classically trained pianist, a practitioner of transcendental meditation, and an advocate for neurodivergent thinkers. She hunts for poetry in independent bookstores around the world, tends to an indoor jungle in the suburbs of Richmond, and once became a certified storm chaser. Students call her a little otherworldly; she takes it as a compliment.