Stacey Mancuso, Ed.D. came to Miami from New York to make her mark in the fields of art, education and practice in Miami-Dade County. As Principal of Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH), the premiere design high school in the country, she provides a select group of accomplished students with a specialized program in Architecture/Interior Design, Industrial Design, Film and Entertainment, Graphic Design, Fashion Design and Fine Art.
As a multi-disciplinary artist she earned a BFA at Syracuse University, a MFA at Ohio State University and Cranbrook Academy of Art and an Ed.D in Educational Leadership at Nova Southeastern University. Prior to coming to Miami, she taught studio art and art history in New York and designed advertisements for renowned classical musicians. Before becoming an administrator, Mancuso taught fine art at Florida International University and Southwood Center for the Arts where she eventually became magnet lead. As principal at DASH, she taught Advanced Placement 3-D Design as well.
Summers were spent with 20 American art students in France and Italy where she taught painting and drawing in the vicinity of the great Impressionists along with her husband fellow art educator and collaborator Tom Wyroba from New World School of the Arts.
Mancuso founded a consulting firm with Melissa Patrylo Small Schools by Design Inc. for an increasing demand for curriculum design for schools that replicated their own educational institutions. Together they have designed curriculum, recruitment plans, facilities, schedules and staff for emerging schools throughout the country.
Melissa Patrylo, Ed.D. was recruited from Ohio by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools as a teacher of advanced French and German. Throughout the years, she has served as a department chair, curriculum specialist, district supervisor of reading, district director, athletic coach, assistant principal and principal of the School for Advanced Studies (SAS), the district’s dual-enrollment senior high school.
Patrylo received a BS degree in French and German from Bowling Green State University, and the Université de Tours-Poitiers, France. She received a MS degree in Reading and a Doctor of Education degree in Educational Leadership /Administration and Finance, both from the University of Miami.
Under her leadership as principal, the School for Advanced Studies was transformed from a small unknown school to a nationally recognized high school of excellence which is consistently ranked in the top high schools in America by Newsweek Magazine. The school is located on five campuses of Miami-Dade College, the nation’s largest community college. One hundred percent of the school’s graduates are accepted to colleges and universities throughout the nation and the world. All of the graduates receive their high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree simultaneously. Visiting teams from nearly every state and from abroad have modeled their school programs on SAS and the school is a model for dual-enrollment throughout the country.
Since 1986, Patrylo continues to serve as a graduate professor of Reading and Educational Curriculum at Nova Southeastern University. Patrylo founded a consulting firm with fellow educator, Stacey Mancuso, Ed.D. Small Schools by Design, Inc. resulted from an increasing demand for curriculum design for schools that replicate Patrylo’s School for Advanced Studies and Mancuso’s Design and Architecture Senior High (DASH) in Miami.
