Academic Director
Kyle Woolley
Introduction:
My name is Kyle Woolley and I am the Academic and Administrative Director of Encuentro Dominicano. I am also the instructor of EDP 361: Social Justice in the Dominican Republic: Sociology, History and Economics in a Caribbean Context. The course takes a look at different issues of development that the Dominican Republic encounters, from different angles. We meet twice a week for two hours at a time and the course is meant to be one part lecture, one part seminar, and one part service learning. Another one of my functions is to oversee your service learning projects, which take place at various schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, and also at a hospice site in and around the city of Santiago. Apart from my duties relating to the student academic experience I also have various administrative duties that range from program finances to special development projects at the ILAC center.
Education:
Master of Arts Sustainable International Development, The Heller School For Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, 2008
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Relations, Saint Anselm College, 2001
Background:
My home base when I am in the United States is New England. I was raised in Bangor, ME and then received my undergraduate education in New Hampshire. Following my graduation from Saint Anselm College I lived for a year in a volunteer community in both Mexico and Chile as part of the Holy Cross Associates of the University of Notre Dame. During that time I worked as a community organizer in an economically marginalized urban neighborhood of Santiago de Chile as well as various orphanages. After my time as a Holy Cross Associate, I joined the Christian Brother Lay Volunteer Program and spent seven months in Bolivia studying Spanish and working in three different orphanages. From Bolivia I moved to Peru and spend a year and a half teaching in an urban slum of Lima as well as in a village situated on the northern coast.
Upon my return to the United States I taught Spanish for two years at Catholic Memorial High School, a Christian Brother school, in Boston, MA. While at Catholic Memorial I took groups of students to El Salvador and Peru and also spent a summer travelling and volunteering in the African countries of Namibia and Zambia.
After two years of teaching, I went to graduate school at Brandeis University to study sustainable development. At Brandeis I focused my studies on economic development, child, youth and family issues and international conflict management. I also spent ten months in Peru working for a Peruvian Non-Government Organization (NGO) that does education reform. During those ten months I also conducted research for my M.A. thesis that analyzed the entrepreneurial abilities of Peruvian high school students.