Dr. Michael Pigg joined Cumberland University in Fall of 2021 as Director of the Master of Arts in Education Program and Assistant Professor of Education. Currently he is serving as a part-time faculty member teaching graduate educational courses. Having spent the past nineteenyears as a Tennessee educator, Dr. Pigg’s career combines successful university and secondary mathematics teaching experiences with consistently effective school leadership at the elementary and secondary levels. 

Dr. Pigg began his career in K-12 as part of the Carter High School mathematics department in Knox County Schools, where he served on the Leadership Team and chaired the school’s Grading Practices Committee.  Dr. Pigg also served as a math instructor in a variety of undergraduate settings, including Lipscomb University, the University of Tennessee, and South College, Knoxville. 

For 10 years, Dr. Pigg served as a building-level principal in Wilson County Schools and the Lebanon Special School District, most recently serving as principal of Castle Heights Elementary.  In that time, he has developed a broad network of relationships with local school teachers and leaders.  These relationships have been cultivated through a variety of collaborative experiences, including serving on district level committees, presenting at both the district and state levels, and supporting or leading various aspects of Wilson County Schools’ leadership development programs for aspiring leaders.

Dr. Pigg has an extensive background relative to teacher evaluation, assessment, and the use of data to foster improvements in student outcomes.  His initial training in the Tennessee teacher evaluation rubrics took place in 2011, the same year Tennessee schools first implemented the TEAM teacher evaluation model still in use today.  His background in mathematics allows him to consistently analyze evaluation and assessment data for the purpose of informing and improving teacher instructional practices over time.  Dr. Pigg’s dissertation research focused on retention and effectiveness of early career teachers, as measured by TEAM teacher evaluation data, as well as the impact of mentoring programs on the early career teacher experience.

Dr. Pigg’s other passions include supporting the College Hills Church of Christ and other nonprofits including the Sara Walker Foundation and Compassionate Hands.  Dr. Pigg previously served as a board member of the Sara Walker Foundation and traveled to Malawi, Africa as a part of multiple mission teams focused on providing training to local Malawian teachers as well as tutoring and support services for students housed at Mtendere Orphanage.

Dr. Pigg lives in Murfreesboro with Stephanie, his wife of 20 years, and their four children Carter, Alex, Lucas, and Bailey, and is currently a faculty member at Trevecca Nazarene University.   

Barbara Parker began teaching at Cumberland University in the fall of 2018.  She teaches graduate courses in Education and is the Director for the Instructional Leadership Program.  Prior to arriving at Cumberland University, Mrs. Parker was a teacher, TNDOE federal programs coordinator, and Director of Schools for the Cannon County School System in Tennessee.

Mrs.  Parker holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts Degree in English from Middle Tennessee State University.  She also holds an Education Specialist degree in Administration and Supervision from Middle Tennessee State University.   

Kerry Ann Moore joined Cumberland University in the fall of 2015, and she teaches Creative Writing and English courses in the School of Humanities Education and the Arts. Mrs. Moore specializes in teaching the writing and reading of Creative Nonfiction and Fiction. Before coming to Cumberland, she studied and taught courses at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Mrs. Moore holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Master of Arts in English. Her writing earned a prestigious fellowship from the University of Minnesota, various graduate assistantships and arts grants, and publication in a longstanding, reputable literary journal. She participated in several writers’ conferences and workshops with award-winning authors from around the world.

“Doc” Menefee joined the faculty in 1996 as Professor of Theatre and Speech. He has served as Director of Theatre at several universities and has directed more than a hundred university and community theatre productions. He has written and published several articles in regional and national theatre journals, as well as serving as editor for Theatre Southwest, a regional theatre journal.  Dr. Menefee has also completed his own translation and adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King from the original Greek which was produced as a main stage production at Cumberland. 

Dr. Menefee is an avid reader with wide-ranging interests from the classical to contemporary novels.  He particularly enjoys novels of other cultures, sci-fi, and western fiction.  Two of his favorite novels are The Count of Monte Cristo and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. His personal study regularly involves reading from the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament).

An accomplished speaker, Dr. Menefee has taught thousands of students in basic communication courses, and has taught courses in Linguistics, public speaking, oral interpretation, speech for the elementary school teacher, and presently teaches voice and articulation for theatre which focuses on dialect problems, stage speech, phonetics (IPA), and the British dialect.

Dr. Tara Mitchell Mielnik began teaching history courses at Cumberland University, first as an adjunct in 2013, and then as full-time faculty in 2017.  Her areas of emphasis include Public History and 20th century American History, with specific research interests in the built environment, the homefront in World War I, and the Depression and New Deal.  Courses that she offers at Cumberland include Emergence of Modern America; Environmental History; Introduction to Public History; Museum Studies; American Crime and American Sports History, among others. Dr. Mielnik began serving as Program Director in History in 2020.

Prior to coming to Cumberland, Dr. Mielnik was a historic preservation specialist with the Metropolitan Nashville Davidson County Historical Commission for fifteen years and served previously at the Tennessee Historical Commission and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.  She currently serves on the Tennessee State Review Board for the National Register of Historic Places, and the Boards of Directors of the History Associates of Wilson County and the Tennessee Council for History Education. 

Dr. Mielnik combined work in historic preservation, New Deal history, and environmental history with her book, New Deal, New Landscape: The Civilian Conservation Corps in South Carolina State Parks (University of South Carolina Press), and is a contributor in Tennessee’s Experience in World War I (University of Tennessee Press), and the Tennessee Encyclopedia.

Dr. Mielnik is a frequent invited presenter to local historical groups as well as at regional and national conferences.  In her classes, she strives to connect local historic events and buildings to larger national historical themes, and to connect to history to other disciplines.  She serves as the faculty advisor for Pi Gamma Mu, the social science honor society, and is active in the campus chapters of Phi Alpha Theta and Omicron Delta Kappa.