NCCU Professor Charmaine McKissick-Melton Honored With Teaching Award

North Carolina Central University (NCCU) Department of Mass Communication Professor Charmaine McKissick-Melton, Ph.D., has been selected to receive the prestigious 2017 University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.

McKissick-Melton was among 17 honorees from across the state to be chosen for the 2017 award, which recognizes exceptional faculty members within the University of North Carolina System. She will be given the award during NCCU’s 129th Baccalaureate Commencement on May 13, 2017.

McKissick-Melton has served in various teaching positions at NCCU and also in the post of interim chair of NCCU’s Department of Mass Communication.

Before joining NCCU in 2007, she was associate professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Bennett College. Melton also previously served as director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Bennett, as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky and as an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame.

In 2011, she was awarded the Award for Teaching Excellence from NCCU.

McKissick-Melton’s teaching specialties include integrated marketing communications, e-commerce, speech communication and broadcast journalism. Her research interests include the Civil Rights Movement’s role in media, the cultural and behavioral influence of mass media, and health communications campaigns, among others. She has produced several literary works, manuscripts and articles during her career, which also included a stint in radio and television sales and management.

In 2017, McKissick-Melton was featured in the PBS “Reel South” series documentary “Soul City.” As the youngest daughter of Floyd B. McKissick Sr., a former North Carolina attorney and civil rights leader, she was able to provide insight into the development of the prominently African-American community named Soul City that her father founded in the 1960s.

McKissick-Melton holds a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and film from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in speech communications from Northern Illinois University. She also earned a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Kentucky.

The University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching was established to emphasize the importance of teaching and to identify, reward and support good teaching.