Dr. Charmaine McKissick-Melton is Associate Professor of Mass Communications at NCCU, where she also directs the department’s long-standing off-campus internship program. Her 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. She was honored with the North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2017. In 2018-19 she served as Co-chair of the Durham City-County Committee on Confederate Monuments and Memorials.
For her fellowship project, Dr. McKissick-Melton engaged students in her Media Business: Advertising, Sales, and Marketing course to explore the past 100 years of advertising to see how pop culture, music, economics, politics and race relations were portrayed through the years. Each student in the class was assigned a four-year period and was responsible for providing a research narrative covering their designated periods.