Program Coordinator + Professor | Communications | Vermont State University Lyndon
Over half of Meaghan Meachem’s life to date has been spent on Vermont State University’s Lyndon campus. In 2003 she graduated from the Television Studies program. Four years later, she found herself back at Lyndon, this time as a faculty member herself.
“My first faculty assembly meeting was wild,” she laughed. “I was sitting in a room with my former professors. It was this out-of-body experience, but also an incredible point of pride. VTSU feels like family. That’s why I came back. The friendships, the mentorship, the sense of belonging are what define this place.”
It was a full-circle moment and very surreal, she says, to come back to teach in the very same department where she first discovered her passion for visual storytelling and media production.
Early Lessons in People and Stories
Meachem was born in Vermont but raised in a few locations across the country before her family settled in Ivoryton, Connecticut when she was six. Her father worked as a traveling wine salesman in her early years but settled in Connecticut and began managing liquor store. She and her sister were “always there underfoot, listening to people talk,” she says. “It was an early lesson in people and stories.” In addition to people, she was always very interested in the arts and creativity. Her grandfather was a hobbyist photographer, and her great uncle was a celebrated furniture designer for Herman Miller. “Being creative is in the blood,” she says.
Discovering her Passion at Lyndon
Meachem initially came to Lyndon in 1995 to study meteorology, but she soon realized her heart was in television and visual media. “The math of meteorology didn’t mesh for me,” she says. “But the creative side—the visuals, the storytelling—that’s what really pulled me in.” She changed her major to Television Studies and began to dig into photography, editing, and behind-the-scenes production. By her senior year, she was selected as a teaching assistant, a role reserved for rising juniors with strong leadership skills. She also ran the peer network program, an early version of what would later become SOAR and the Peer Leaders Initiative.
When she was preparing to graduate, Professor David Ballou offered advice that stuck with her. “If the TV thing doesn’t work out, you should consider teaching. Put that in your back pocket.” She did.
After graduation, Meachem and several classmates joined a new Time Warner 24-hour news station in upstate New York, launching what became a regional hub covering Syracuse, Binghamton, Potsdam, and Utica. “There were five of us from Lyndon who started together,” she recalls. “It was an incredible experience to build something from the ground up.”
Two years later, she pursued her master’s degree at Marlboro College Graduate School in southern Vermont, completing the hybrid program while working multiple jobs—including developing media education programs at a local community access channel. “I was working with elementary and high school students to build their communication skills,” she says. “I think that’s where the idea of teaching started to take root.”
Teaching Takes Root
In 2008, she officially took the idea of teaching out of her back pocket and returned to her alma mater as a tenure-track assistant professor. There, she helped lead Lyndon’s transition from traditional television broadcast to a cross-platform, multimedia journalism model. “When I was hired, there was a real need to expand our understanding of what journalism could be,” Meachem explains. “It was the birth of the multimedia journalist, and we had to evolve our curriculum to match the realities of the industry.”
NewsLINC – the digital evolution of Lyndon’s long-running student media project now known as News7 – was one of her first projects. Its name is a nod to the origins of the program, The LINC Project. She also helped integrate social media, web content, and digital storytelling into the communications curriculum. “Our students needed to learn how to tell stories wherever people were consuming them: on-air, online, and on social media,” she says.
Now Program Coordinator for Communications at VTSU Lyndon, Meachem is a part of a department that includes 11+ programs across the Arts & Communications Division. Lyndon and Castleton share a common communications core with concentrations that reflect each campus’s strengths: cinema and print journalism at Castleton, broadcast journalism at Lyndon, and shared programs in content creation. “The collaboration between campuses is something I’m really proud of,” Meachem notes. “It gives our students more opportunities, more perspectives, and more flexibility.”
Collaboration is Central to her Teaching Philosophy
Cross-campus and interdisciplinary collaboration is something Meachem is known for across VTSU. Communications majors work alongside Atmospheric Sciences majors on weather reporting, combining technical meteorology with on-camera broadcast skills. Others work with students in the Music Business Industry (MBI) program to produce audio for film, podcasts, and multimedia projects.
“We had a first-year student create an audio-based fiction podcast,” she shares. “They recorded in the MBI lab, worked with music students for an original score, and layered sound effects to bring the story to life. That’s what our program is about—collaboration and creativity.”
Team-teaching is central to her philosophy. “I might teach videography while my colleague teaches editing,” she explains. “Students get two perspectives on how to approach the same story. We model the teamwork they’ll need in the industry.”
Meachem also remains deeply connected to VTSU alumni, who are always willing to return to campus to guest lecture, mentor students, and share their expertise. Many work at major outlets like WPRI and ESPN. “Our alumni are humble, passionate, and grateful for the foundation they built here,” she says. “They give so much back.”
Ben Riegel (‘05) is one of those alumni. They graduated two years apart and stayed in touch. Riegel now works for ESPN as a Producer and is a favorite guest lecturer in Meachem’s classes. He really admires her dedication to growing the next generation of talent. “She was doing that back in college and was always thinking about it,” he says. “She puts me in contact with kids trying to learn the ins and outs of the business. She’s trying to grow that talent that she sees in students and put them in a position of success. And she really understands how to do it.”
Leadership and Service at VTSU and Beyond
She’s taken on a variety of leadership roles across VTSU, including serving as Faculty Assembly Moderator last academic year, Secretary of Faculty Assembly, and sitting on the NECHE Self-Study Steering Committee, Workday Steering Committee, and Academic Operations Team. “I wear a lot of hats,” she admits, “but I see it all as part of keeping this place moving forward.”
Prior to the pandemic, Meachem helped organize a yearly exchange program with a Chinese university that brought journalism students to Lyndon each spring to study American journalism and experience the classroom culture here. “It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career,” she reflects. “They were fascinated by the freedom of the press here and the ability journalists have to create their own stories. It opened their eyes and ours.”
Beyond her extensive portfolio at VTSU, Meachem is involved in her local community of Greensboro as the Communications Chair for the Greensboro Association, a local nonprofit dedicated to community engagement and lake stewardship. She manages their social media and recently led a complete rewrite of the organization’s communications strategy. She’s also worked at least one day a week at Danforth Pewter in Waterbury since she was in graduate school.
Outside of her professional life, Meachem and her husband, her partner of 22 years and a Navy veteran and meteorologist, celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary this year. They share their home with her parents, a Weimaraner (Miles), and a fluffy Maine Coon cat (Finn).
Meachem is incredibly proud of the program she’s been integral to, and of the students she’s mentored over the years. She’s found a real sense of belonging and a meaningful career at VTSU. Lyndon will always feel like home and VTSU will always feel like family, she says. “It’s an extension of who I am. Every day I get to help students find their voice, just like my professors helped me find mine. That’s the best part of all.”