Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

By Megan Weintraub

Dr. Jennifer Woolard, an assistant professor in Georgetown’s Department of Psychology, dedicates her time inside and outside of the classroom to researching the complex intersection of “kids, cops, crime, and community.” In collaboration with a team of enthusiastic Georgetown students, Dr. Woolard, a developmental and community psychologist, examines the interactions between children, families, and the multifaceted social environments of the D.C. legal and education systems.

Teenagers who experience the overlapping systems of education and justice can face challenges that are difficult to navigate. For example, interactions with the police and court system can compound a student’s difficulties in school.

“We work within systems of care and systems of control to help understand kids’ experiences. Often, a system of care, such as a school, ends up serving as a system of control, while a system of control, such as a detention center, becomes a system of care,” explains Dr. Woolard. “Our overall goal is to find how these systems can serve kids better.”

Much of Dr. Woolard’s recent fieldwork has taken place at City Lights, a public charter school in Northeast D.C. where she and her research team of graduate and undergraduate students are performing a three-year evaluation. City Lights serves 60 special education students in grades 9-12. Since roughly half of these students are also involved in the juvenile justice system, City Lights faces a challenge of coordination across multiple agencies. Dr. Woolard’s team helps to assess the students’ capacities so that the various individuals and organizations involved with City Lights can support the students in the most positive and effective way possible.

Dr. Woolard’s deep commitment to D.C. youth is also evident through her work with Peaceoholics, a community-based organization of “people addicted to peace.” Founded by two local organizers, Jauhar Abraham and Ronald L. Moten, Peaceoholics works with high schools on issues of community development and youth empowerment. Dr. Woolard and her graduate students serve as evaluators and consultants to provide a research base to the program.

“We’re helping Peaceoholics to develop an action model of social change with the hope that we can translate this into a curriculum to be used in schools and communities all over the country,” she says. “Peaceoholics does great work—brokering truces among gangs and helping youth to become leaders in their own communities—and we feel grateful to have the opportunity to add an academic perspective to the project.”

In addition to collaborations with schools and community organizations, Dr. Woolard works on relevant policy issues to aid the youth of D.C. For one current project, she is partnering with the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services and Department of Corrections to report on incarcerated youth who are serving time in adult jails. This trend has garnered recent attention because it can have a significant impact on a teenager’s ability to succeed. Soon, Dr. Woolard will write a report about the experiences of both the incarcerated teenagers and the staff of the correctional facility in order to make recommendations to the D.C. City Council. She sees this as an opportunity to bridge the gap between academia and practice.

“As educators, we have a responsibility to bring our knowledge to law and policy. My challenge is to reach across the barrier of jargon and training to try to bring about meaningful, systemic change,” she says. “We also have the ability to make use of the luxury we have as academics to ask theoretical questions and to bring those questions to the field.”

Before coming to Georgetown in 2002, Dr. Woolard worked in the smaller urban settings of Gainesville at the University of Florida and Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. Urban centers often yield both the greatest challenges to researchers and the greatest likelihood that their work will have an impact on the communities they study. Due to its size and bureaucratic hurdles, D.C. has offered Dr. Woolard a unique perspective to her experience in the field of developmental and community psychology.

“Like any urban center, D.C. has great potential, but it’s difficult to create systemic change,” she explains.

Dr. Woolard’s success at applying the benefits of academic inquiry to societal problems is exemplified by the research lab she founded at Georgetown, CRAWL (the Center for Research on Adolescence, Women, and the Law). The lab has ties to the Center for Social Justice at Georgetown and its work is fueled by thesis-writing students and GUROP fellowship recipients. At CRAWL, students participate in projects that address adolescent development and juvenile justice. Dr. Woolard is quick to point out that her students’ involvement is a key component of her research.

“At Georgetown, I get to work with really smart students in the classroom and to put them in contact with kids who can use our help,” explains Dr. Woolard. “As practitioners in the field, we’re able to influence law and policy decisions. It’s a great experience for me and the students. We all get a lot out of learning about and helping these kids.”

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