Woman with two AU master's degrees finalist for Woman of the Year award

When it comes to the education she has received in her life, Beth DiDonato said she feels extremely fortunate.

“I believe it more than prepared me for what I have accomplished,” said DiDonato, whose education includes two master’s degrees from Ashland University.

DiDonato’s most recent accomplishment was being selected as a finalist for the 2024 Lucille Nussdorfer Tuscarawas County Woman of the Year award, presented annually by the Dennison Railroad Depot Museum.

Though she didn’t win the award, DiDonato, who lives in Dennison with her husband, said she was honored to have been named a finalist.

“My mother’s example and my giving community have always inspired me to give back,” she said. “My mantra has always been to ‘give where I can; give how I can; give when I can.’ I can only hope that some of what I have done and continue to do has helped/will help my community be a better place to be.”

She volunteers with the Claymont Foundation, Dennison Rotary, Clayland Lions Club, Clay Heritage Museum, Dennison Railroad Festival, Polar Express Train Ride, Twin City Parks and Waterways and Uhrichsville Methodist Church.

When she isn’t volunteering, DiDonato is serving her community as the executive director of the Twin City Chamber of Commerce, which serves the businesses, community organizations and residents of Dennison (population of a little more than 2,000) and Uhrichsville (about 5,000 people) in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.  She has been in this job since 2022.

She took the position after working in education for 31 years, 23 of them in administration.

Master's degrees in curriculum and instruction, administration

Both of her master’s degrees from AU helped her as a school administrator, she said. Her first master’s degree came in 1995 in curriculum and instruction, while the second was in 2001 in administration.

“While working on my administration degree, I was given real life experience to work through,” she said. “A lot of the situations present in textbooks were not realistic, but idealistic in nature. The professors made sure we had opportunities to present situations we had dealt with as teachers and then compounded them to what and how administrators would handle a similar scenario at a more advanced level.”

Reviewing those incidents, as well as ones she and her fellow students encountered during their internships not only gave her a chance to see where she could improve, but the open conversations provided her with further potential problems and probable solutions, DiDonato said.

“Learning some ‘out of the box’ ways to think and then sharing with our classmates gave us more mental tools as we moved on,” she added about the AU graduate classes she took on the university’s Massillon campus.

Ashland accepted some of the classes she had already taken and gave credit for some of the experiences she had while teaching, said DiDonato, who appreciated the shorter time to obtain her post-graduate degrees because of those things.

“As I navigated through the various internships required, the professors at Ashland were wonderful,” DiDonato said. “Knowing most of us taking the post-graduate classes were teaching and had families, they worked with us to help ease the burden of being over-taxed with ‘school’ work.”

From radiology to education and now a chamber of commerce director

Interestingly, DiDonato, an elementary teacher and administrator, was one of only five people in the nation named a Terrell H. Bell Award winner during her education career, which also saw one of the three elementary school buildings she was the principal for recognized as a federally identified Blue Ribbon School.

She actually didn’t get into education until after working 20 years in radiology as a radiologic technologist.

DiDonato credits her mother’s tenacity and strength for helping her have three successful careers and a lifetime of volunteering. Her mother raised her and her sister alone after her husband was killed in auto accident.

That attitude came in handy when she started to lead the Twin City Chamber of Commerce, which had been without an executive director for eight months before she came onboard.

All her education, particularly from Ashland University, also has been helpful in being named a finalist for the Tuscarawas County Woman of the Year award and finding success in her newest job, too.

“There was no one to ‘show me the ropes’ or give me suggestions on what to do and how to do it,” DiDonato said. “Leaning on my ability to relate to people and relying on a lot of the mental tools learned from AU, I have been able to direct the Chamber of Commerce as the entity I believe it was meant to be: a supporter and promoter of the businesses in our community.”