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

Shemberger has published in several peer-reviewed publications, including Journalism History, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, and the Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication Journal. She also has several book chapters published or forthcoming and professional articles in guidebooks published by the PR News Press. She has presented at several academic and professional conferences. Her primary research interests include journalism history, the scholarship of teaching and learning, sunshine laws, and crisis communication.

In 2017, Shemberger was a Scripps Howard Academic Leadership Academy Fellow at Louisiana State University. She was among a dozen other journalism faculty in the United States selected to advance their leadership training in the academy. In 2014, Shemberger was named a Business Journalism Professors Seminar Fellow. One of 14 faculty members from across the nation, she completed the 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, focusing on pedagogy and course redesign. She was interim director of the Faculty Development Center in 2016 and vice president of the Faculty Senate in 2016-17. She also was adjunct faculty in the Murray State College of Education in 2012-13. In summers 2017 and 2018, she taught in the Governor’s Scholars Program and will teach in summer 2019.

Prior to teaching at Murray State, she was the assistant director of communication in the public relations and marketing office at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Her PR work was recognized by 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 and APSU College of Business. Before entering academia, Shemberger had successful, award-winning reporting careers, specializing in the education and court beats, and received numerous awards from the Kentucky Press Association.

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 was a director from 2016-18 on the Society’s national board and was chair of the advisory council for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine. Honor society memberships also include the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honor society and others. She is a member of the American Journalism Historians Association, the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Education Writers Association.

Shemberger has a bachelor’s degree from Western Kentucky University, with a double major in mass communication, and history and government; a master’s in mass communication, Murray State; a master’s in management, Austin Peay; and a doctorate in administration and supervision, with a concentration in higher education, Tennessee State University. She is pursuing online graduate studies in instructional systems design at the University of Kentucky.