Our Head of School

Susan Donnelly became the Head of School at Whatcom Day Academy in August 2001. She moved to Bellingham with her family at that time because her husband, David Carroll, was taking a new position as an associate professor in the Teacher Education program in the Woodring College of Education at WWU. Ms. Donnelly has over thirty years of professional experience in teaching, administration, and writing.

Ms. Donnelly was raised in Alberta, Canada, and began her career taking Early Childhood Education at a college in Edmonton. After a few years as a classroom teacher, she quickly moved into administration, directing the demonstration center at the same college and teaching early childhood classes to adult students. She moved to New Hampshire to pursue graduate work and earned a Master’s Degree in Elementary/Early Childhood Education at Antioch New England Graduate School. From there she spent several years at The Prospect Center in Vermont, involved in teaching, educational research, teacher education, and administration.

The next phase of Ms. Donnelly’s career took her to Michigan State University where she was an administrator in the Teacher Education Program during a time when they were instituting a new program, with a year-long internship replacing the traditional semester of student teaching. At MSU, Ms. Donnelly had the opportunity to work with nationally recognized experts doing cutting edge research in various fields of education. A book has since been published about the work of Team One, the group she worked with to institute the new program, and a chapter features her work as Student Coordinator.

After working at the university level, Ms. Donnelly was eager to return to a school setting where she could be in the presence of children every day. Under Ms. Donnelly’s leadership, Whatcom Day Academy has been growing into a professional organization that meets the high standards for accreditation set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which the school achieved in 2005, and the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools, which is in process.

In her spare time, Ms. Donnelly enjoys gardening and developing a habitat for wildlife in their large yard, as well as creating and sampling culinary experiments with her husband. She has two teenage sons, Alan and Ian, who are graduates of Whatcom Day Academy.