Participant Info

First Name
Melony
Last Name
Shemberger
Affiliation
Murray State University
Website URL
www.murraystate.edu
Keywords
Dorothy Dix, Clare M. Reckert, women's suffrage (Tennessee newspapers and press work of clubs), newspaper editorials of Civil War border states, bookmobiles
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr. Melony Shemberger is associate professor of journalism and mass communication at Murray State University.

Shemberger has published several journal articles and book chapters. She also has professional articles in several guidebooks published by the PR News Press. She has presented at several academic and professional conferences. Her primary research interests include journalism and media history, sunshine laws, scholarship of teaching and learning, and various public relations topics.

In 2017, Shemberger was named a Scripps Howard Academic Leadership Academy fellow at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She studied several topics about academic leadership during the weeklong event. In 2014, she was a Business Journalism Professors Seminar Fellow. One of 14 faculty members from across the nation, she completed her fellowship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Phoenix. At Murray State, she was a Provost Faculty Teaching Fellow, presenting workshops and writing articles that focus on pedagogy and course redesign. In 2016, she was interim director of the Faculty Development Center and previously served as vice president of the Faculty Senate.

Prior to teaching in 2013 at Murray State, she served eight years as the assistant director of communication in the public relations and marketing office at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Her PR work was honored by two groups, the Tennessee College Public Relations Association and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She also was adjunct faculty in the APSU Department of Communication, APSU College of Business and the Murray State Department of Educational Studies, Leadership and Counseling.

Before entering academia, Shemberger had successful, award-winning reporting careers at newspapers and radio stations, specializing in the education and court beats. Today, she continues to cover the education beat. Since 2000, she has received many reporting and page design awards from the Kentucky Press Association, with her most recent honor in 2015 for investigative reporting.

She is a lifetime member of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the top academic interdisciplinary honor society in the nation and on campus, where she serves as Murray State’s vice president. In addition, she serves on the Society’s national board of directors, leading as chair of the advisory council for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine. She also holds memberships in the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honor society and several academic discipline-specific honor societies.

Shemberger has a bachelor’s degree from Western Kentucky University, where she double majored in mass communication, and history and government; a master’s in mass communication from Murray State; a master’s in management from Austin Peay; and a doctorate in administration and supervision, with a concentration in higher education, from Tennessee State University.

Recent Publications

Shemberger, M. (April 2018). Breaking News, Breaking Barriers: A look at Clare Reckert’s business reporting in The New York Times. Journalism History.

Shemberger, M. (2017). Beyond the Study Guide: Active, In-class Approaches to Help Students Improve Information Review and Recall, 2017 Pedagogicon Proceedings published by New Forums Press.

Shemberger, M. (2017). Is the Sun Shining? A Qualitative Study on the Presence of Sunshine Laws in the College and University Journalism Curriculum, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 72(1) 1. doi:10.1177/1077695815611709

Shemberger, M. (2016). Early Calloway County Connections Between WPA Road Projects and the Bookmobile, Journal of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society.

Wright, L., Shemberger, M., & Price, E. (2015). Not Another Quiz: An Approach to Engage Today’s Students in Meaningful Current Events Discussions, first published online in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator on August 21, 2015. doi:10.1177/1077695815598435.

Shemberger, M. (2015). Voices of a Border State: Editorials of the Civil War Kentucky Press, Journal of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society.

Shemberger, M. (2015). Teaching Transparency: One-State Case Study of Sunshine Laws and the Journalism Curriculum. Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication Journal. Online: http://aejmc.us/spig/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2015/07/tjmc-s15-shemberger.pdf.

Shemberger, M., & Wright, L. (2014). Exploring the Use of Social Media as a Digital Study Guide, December 2014 issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Libraries & Archives, Pedagogy