Rev. Michael J. Woods, SJ was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1964 to parents John and Eleanor Woods. He has four siblings and sixteen nieces and nephews. Mike graduated from Penn Hills High School in 1983, and in 1988, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He taught high school chemistry for several years in Pittsburgh, Maryland, and central Pennsylvania. He also spent two years participating full-time in triathlons, competing in races across the country. In 1992 he competed in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. While his intention was to go back to teaching, the two-year hiatus allowed a vocation to the priesthood to be born.

Mike entered St. Paul Seminary in 1993 to study for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 1995, after two years of philosophy studies at Duquesne University, he went to Rome to study at the North American College and the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Sacred Theology (S.T.B.). As a diocesan seminarian, during the summer of 1996, he studied Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem and lived with the Jesuit community. It was there, in part, that Mike's decision to enter the Society of Jesus took shape.

In 1998 Mike entered the Jesuit novitiate of St. Andrew Hall in Syracuse, NY and professed vows in August of 2000. During his years as a novice he worked at Dorothy Day House, a shelter for abused women. He also worked for the Refugee Resettlement Program run by Catholic Charities of Syracuse, helping refugees who had fled fighting in Kosovo and Bosnia. From 2000-2002 for his Regency, Mike taught philosophy and theology at Wheeling Jesuit University. In addition to teaching, he attended to campus ministry duties and was involved in social justice issues pertaining to rural poverty in Appalachia. He also spent a summer working with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, assisting children who were victims of land mines left over from the 1992-95 Balkan conflict.

In August 2002 Mike began graduate studies in liturgy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is currently working on his dissertation, which examines the relationship between the American Liturgical Movement and the Catholic Rural Life Movement. Fr. Woods is a Jesuit of the Maryland Province and was ordained June 12, 2004 at Alumni Memorial Chapel of Loyola College in Baltimore, MD by his Eminence William Cardinal Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore. Mike served as priest in residence at St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Parish in Woodstock, MD, until January 2006, when he moved to Marquette University to complete work on his dissertation. After doctoral studies Mike would like to teach at a Jesuit college or university and continue working on issues pertaining to rural life.

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