Building Leadership Capacity in Rural West Virginia
Supported through a grant by the US Department of Education
Lead Organization:
McDowell County Schools
Collaborating Partner Districts:
Raleigh County Schools
Fayette County Schools
The Team
Dr. Terry Cash is President and CEO of Cash Educational Consulting Services headquartered in Clemson, SC. He recently retired as the Assistant Director of the National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC) located at Clemson University. His responsibilities at the NDPC included a broad-range of functions that supported research and dropout prevention strategies advocated by the NDPC. He has a rich and varied background in the area of program evaluation design and has served as the Principal Investigator for multiple federal, state, and non-profit funded inquiries and third-party evaluations in the areas of school leadership development, career and technical education, alternative schools, dropout prevention, after-school programming, smaller learning communities, students with disabilities, and truancy prevention.
Dr. Cash has over three decades of experience as a teacher, principal, district-level administrator, state-level Department of Education, and university faculty member. He has developed, implemented, and evaluated multiple programs in school districts across the U.S. that were designed to address the needs of students most at-risk of dropping out of school.
Dr. Anthony Annunziato is Associate Professor in the Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership at St. John’s University’s Doctoral program in Educational Administration. Prior to that, Dr. Annunziato had been an educator for twenty-eight years serving as superintendent of schools for the last eight years in Suffolk County, Long Island, NY. He has also been a teacher of Social Studies, assistant principal, high school principal and assistant superintendent for business.
Dr. Annunziato holds a B.A. in History and an M.S.Ed. in Social Studies Education from Queens College, City University of New York. He has also earned an Ed.M. and Ed.D. in Education Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. His doctoral research was completed under Dr. Margaret Terry Orr as part of a research grant to study the school superintendency. His own research was on the acquisition of political leadership skills of superintendents.
He has also served as adjunct lecturer for the Stony Brook University’s School of Professional Development in the Department of Educational Administration and as an adjunct associate professor in the doctoral program for the Department of Educational Leadership and Accountability at St. John’s University.
A leader nationally recognized by USA Today for his innovative approach to education, Dr. Edwards successfully implemented numerous groundbreaking programs to improve student performance during his sixteen-year tenure as a school administrator.
As President and CEO of Edwards Educational Services, Inc., Dr. Edwards has been instrumental in helping countless organizations tailor similar programs with positive, far-reaching results. In addition, Dr. Edwards is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, facilitator and trainer regularly featured as a content expert on television and radio with appearances on CNN. As a planner, Dr. Edwards has worked locally, nationally and internationally with both for-profit and non-profit organizations, such as The United Nations and World Bank, in 49 states and 30 countries. Dr. Steven Edwards has served as the Vice President for the Children, Communities, and Youth Division of the National Crime Prevention Council in Washington, D.C. overseeing initiatives that focus on delivering a crime prevention message to America’s youth and youth worldwide.
Currently, Dr. Edwards is utilizing his leadership and advocacy skills as well as his international experience as President and CEO of two non-profits: The Abbas Project, which he founded in 2011 and Ignitus Worldwide, which he took ownership of in 2012. Throughout his thirty-seven year professional career, Dr. Edwards has published numerous articles on leadership and has co-authored five books. He has also served as a professor of educational leadership for both the University of Connecticut, where he received his Ph.D., and the George Washington University teaching prospective administrators in the Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Mary Lu MacCorkle retired as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction in a county in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator for 38 years as a teacher, administrator, county Assistant Superintendent, and School Improvement Specialist for the state of West Virginia. She earned her doctorate from Marshall University in Leadership Studies. Her background in pre-school, middle school, and high school curriculum and instruction has provided a platform for her work with administrators and schools in need of support. She has provided training for schools around West Virginia in student engagement, instructional leadership, teacher collaboration and school improvement. In addition, she has worked with the West Virginia Department of Education to design support for leadership teams and administrators from underperforming schools. Dr. MacCorkle has also worked with individual schools and administrators to enhance the instructional leadership capacity of teachers and administrators.
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