New teacher in the department of TVS

Blurb: Meet Assistant Professor Meaghan Meachem, department of Television Studies

Section: Campus News
9/12/08

By Steve Cormier
Critic Staff

Meaghan Meachem will be the first to tell you that this is the last place she expected to be.
Meachem’s office, located above the News 7 studios here at Lyndon State College, belie the makings of a person not long for its space, with empty walls and even emptier shelves. But the closet-like workspace of this new and youthful Assistant Professor in the department of Television Studies is not her arena of choice, nor does it accurately show just how excited she is to be back.
“Even though it’s been 5 years it sort of feels like I never left,” Meachem said. “Things don’t change very much around here.”
Meachem is a 2003 graduate of the very department for which she now finds herself working in. A colleague now, she heartily admits that she has not forgotten her time here.
And that is what excites her about being back at Lyndon. The television studies department and the News 7 team are so engrained in the school and community, with 9,000 viewing homes in northeast Vermont and northwestern New Hampshire, it is important to Meachem that students are getting a hands-on approach to learning.
“[The students] go out every day and do stories in the community just like every other news station would and so they’re immersed in and amongst that community all the time,” Meachem said.
Before joining the faculty here at Lyndon State College this year Meachem completed her master’s degree work in television and technology at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. She has taught at the Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, VT and has worked in the private sphere for Greater Northshire Access Television doing photography and field production and for News 10 Now in Syracuse, NY, which is owned by the Time Warner Cable Company.
Having those opportunities and work experience, along with her time here at Lyndon as a student, makes Meachem a resource for her new students. “To bring the experiences I have in a studio production environment to the classroom makes it much more tangible,” she says, “and kind of fun because it makes me more real too.”