Tina Lesher, professor of journalism and former chairman of the Department of Communication at William Paterson University of New Jersey, is a former newspaperwoman who worked at The Scranton Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Hartford Courant. She also spent a summer as a Knight Faculty Fellow working at The Columbus Dispatch.  Lesher is founder of NEWScamp, a summer program for middle and high school students, held out of Union County College in New Jersey. She twice served as president of the New Jersey Press Women, and was its 1992 Communicator of Achievement. As a freelance writer, she has written columns on humor, education and food, and has won a number of writing awards for her work.  Three times she was named a winner of the Students’ First Award at William Paterson, given by the Student Government Association each year to two professors who inspire students.  She also has been a recipient of the Golden Quill Award from the Garden State Students’ Press Association.

In 2001, Lesher spent a semester as a visiting sabbatical professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. As a 2006-07 Fulbright Scholar, she returned to the UAE and taught half-time at Zayed University while competing a project in which she interviewed Emirati women of all ages about the changes in their lives in a country that, in less than 50 years, went from a desert community to one of the wealthiest nations in the world. She has given many talks on the topic to organizations and universities  in the U. S. and the UAE.

Lesher was awarded a sabbatical from WPUNJ for the spring 2010 semester to write a novel based on her knowledge about women in the UAE. She spent two weeks at Dairy Hollow Writing Colony in Arkansas to complete the book.
She is also the author of   “Club ’43,” a book that details the lives of 12 New Jersey women, all born in 1943.