Language for Life: How Language Learning and the Peace Corps Influenced my Life

Jessica Doyle on how we learn, Peace Corps from The Badger Herald on Vimeo.

Jessica Doyle attended Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mrs. Doyle studied French and education in college and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1967 and a master’s degree in educational administration in 1976. After graduating from college, Jessica Doyle, along with her husband governor Jim Doyle, joined the Peace Corps and taught English to high school students in Tunisia, Africa. A life long educator, Mrs. Doyle has taught elementary, middle, and high school students. Jessica Doyle’s current activities focus on educational excellence, literacy, and the promotion of state pride and culture.

John Sheffy graduated from UW-Madison in 2001 with a degree in Wildlife Ecology.  As an undergrad his international interests were sparked by taking Portuguese and studying abroad in South Africa.   He served in the Peace Corps from 2002-2004 as a Natural Resource Management Volunteer in Togo where he learned how to communicate in French, Ewe, and local body language.  Over the course of two years John helped start a coffee roasting co-op to improve local livelihoods and completed research for his masters degree at the University of Montana in community-based forest management.  Since then John has applied his Peace Corps skills both on a professional level, as a sustainable agriculture program manager in Kenya and Mexico, and a personal level, as an international community building coffee roaster.  John is currently a PhD student in the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies and the UW-Madison Peace Corps Representative.