Women of Achievement: Dr. Tamara Zellars Buck

Dr. Tamara Zellars Buck is as committed to this region as she is her students. As professor and chair of the Department of Mass Media at Southeast Missouri State University, Dr. Buck is a teacher, scholar and author who has been recognized for her work as faculty adviser to the Arrow student newspaper which under her guidance has won numerous statewide and national college media awards.

“Watching students find their joy as they find their place in this industry is the most meaningful thing to me,” she said. “Students don’t always know what they want to do when they come to this department, and I love watching them get that moment when they find that dream job and feel that true joy in what they’re doing.”

Dr. Buck earned her JD emphasizing intellectual property law from The University of Memphis, and her Master of Administration-Public Administration and Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication-Journalism from Southeast Missouri State University, where she served as Southeast’s first African American editor of the Arrow.

Buck currently serves as vice president of Member Support for the College Media Association. She has been named co-winner of the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher Award for innovations in teaching Diversity in Communication. She was also named a Kopenhaver Fellow by the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication in

the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University and the Commission on the Status of Women of AEJMC.

Buck is an active community service volunteer, serving as board of directors’ chair of the PORCH Initiative, an organization dedicated to community revitalization in south Cape Girardeau. She is a proud native of the Missouri Bootheel who says her mission is to inspire and encourage local residents to learn and experience all they can, then share their gifts to improve the region.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Tamara Zellars Buck as a nominee for the 2021 Cape Girardeau Zonta Club’s Woman of Achievement Award.