About Me

Welcome! You can visit my LinkedIn page for a detailed work history, but here are some of the highlights of my oddball career path:

After graduating from Syracuse University, I became an AmeriCorps volunteer in Kirksville, Missouri, which was a worldview-expanding experience for a kid from Long Island. You can read a bit about that in a little essay called Hy-Vee.

After AmeriCorps, I moved ninety miles south to attend grad school at the University of Missouri in Columbia. There, I earned a Master’s Degree in European History and made it as far into the Ph.D program as passing my comprehensive exams. While working on my dissertation, I fell in love with teaching and jumped the grad-school ship to start a teaching career at the Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.

I was displaced by flooding from the levee failures related to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I loved New Orleans a lot, which you can read about here, or in a little op-ed piece I wrote for the Times-Picayune in 2006. In fact, I almost stayed in the city despite losing my job in a big round of flood-related layoffs.

But my love of teaching pushed me north to Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, PA. There, I joined an amazing crew of whitewater paddling and barbecue enthusiasts in the outdoor education program. When not adventuring outdoors or coaching cross-country, I taught World, AP United States, and AP European history.

I moved to Vermont in 2018 for a life of outdoor beauty and recreation. In addition to freelance writing and adjunct college teaching, I worked as a reporter for the Valley News, a daily newspaper serving the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire.

I have more than two decades of experience in student advising, academic support, and writing instruction at both the high school and college levels.

Feel free to get in touch if you’re in need of academic support or a writing coach. I’m happy to work with students from middle school through college to identify academic challenges and collaborate on solutions.

I can be reached by email at Cdolan18020@gmail.com