Dr. Kathy Keltner holds a B.A. (1988) from Virginia Tech in Communication Studies, emphasis in Public Relations.   She has an M.S. in Mass Communication from Middle Tennessee State University (2000), and earned a Ph.D. in Communication from The Ohio University’s E.W. Scripts College of Communication in 2007.  As a Guggenheim Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in 2004, she was able to advance the research for her dissertation pertaining to the Apollo program.

She brings a variety of practical public relations experience to the classroom.  After graduating from Virginia Tech in 1988, she worked at the Virginia Film Office and then traveled  to Washington, DC where she worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in the Office of Commercial Programs, the Office of Space Flight, and later in the NASA History Office.  There, she cultivated her research interests  addressing how issues and stories of science and technology are communicated to the public, and what role public relations has in those discourses.  She has published articles pertaining to public opinion, presidential rhetoric, and representations of scientists in popular culture. 

Dr. Keltner has also worked for an environmental consulting company, and was a teaching assistant for Al Gore at MTSU in 2001 before working at the First Amendment Center/Freedom Forum in Nashville, TN.  Dr. Keltner taught at Charleston (SC) Southern University, Lipscomb University, and Vanderbilt University before joining the PR faculty at Eastern Kentucky University, and is happy to be returning to her native home, the Commonwealth of Kentucky.