Liz McCormick

This week on Inside Appalachia, we look back at some of the stories we told in 2022. We took you to the floods in eastern Kentucky, where you met people who witnessed terrible destruction. We also invited you along as we talked to Appalachians who know a little something about resilience, like Dolly Parton. Because you invited us into your homes, we invited you into ours with a special trip to Mason’s hometown — Floyd, Virginia.

West Virginians returned to the polls again Tuesday. The big items on the ballot were four proposed amendments to the state constitution, but voters rejected all four.

West Virginia HEAT, which stands for Hospitality Education and Training, is a program within the West Virginia Department of Education that is dedicated to training the next generation of hospitality workers in West Virginia. These workers are often the first faces visitors see when they come to our state. Liz McCormick spoke with Tami Maynard, who works in the West Virginia HEAT program, to learn more.

Kentucky author Barbara Kingsolver is the 2022 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University. While Kingsolver’s fiction takes readers all over the world, she says her Appalachian roots inspire key themes and ideas in her stories. Liz McCormick sat down with Kingsolver to learn more.

West Liberty University President W. Franklin Evans’ contract will expire at the end of this year after the university board of governors voted down a motion to offer him an extension. Evans came under fire last fall for plagiarism allegations.

West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch is now the new superintendent of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, after stepping aside as the chief of the state's school system.

With the fall 2022 school year just around the corner, school safety and preparedness were top of mind at the July West Virginia Board of Education meeting last week.

Recently, NPR published a list of 50 books for 50 states to celebrate summer reading. The one they identified for West Virginia was “Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry From West Virginia” edited by Doug Van Gundy and Laura Long.

Rick Gillman, director of career technical education at the West Virginia Department of Education, said that while CTE programs exist in many counties, he and his staff wanted to develop something for all the middle school teachers in the state.

Keith Zullig is a researcher and professor at the West Virginia University School of Public Health, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Education reporter Liz McCormick sat down with Zullig to talk about the impacts that school shootings have on our children – and what we can do to help them feel safe.