Melody van Lidth de Jeude, an instructor in the School of Communications who had taught public speaking to hundreds of Elon University students since her arrival on campus four years ago, died May 27, 2011, following a brief illness.
Memorial service plans are incomplete at this time. Information will be shared on E-net once details are confirmed in the weeks ahead.
Van Lidth de Jeude was a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Organizational Communication at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has taught at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, and Wake Forest University as well as Heinrich Heine Universitat.
She earned her Master’s degree at Southern Illinois University where she received the Robert B. Hawkins Award for Excellence in Speech Communication Scholarship. Since 2004, she has taught an online course for the Institüt für Verbundstudium in Mönchengladbach, Germany. In May 2006, she coauthored a paper presented at the University of Tampere.
In addition to Public Speaking courses, she also taught Persuasion and The Process of Communication in the School of Communications.