A former secondary school teacher in Massachusetts and Colorado, she received her BA in political science from UMass-Amherst (1991), her MA in special education from the University of Northern Colorado (1996), and the PhD in educational leadership from Colorado State University (2001). Dr. Woodland has been the principal investigator on a number of large-scale evaluation research projects and was awarded the prestigious Marcia Guttentag award for excellence in evaluation by the American Evaluation Association in 2005. Her scholarship focuses on instructional leadership, school improvement, and organizational collaboration.