Faculty

Suzanne Benally has extensive experience in higher education policy, assessment and diversity. Formerly she directed an Institute on Ethnic Diversity at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Ms. Benally has worked with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, as an interim executive director and director of education programs to address the concerns and needs of American Indian education K–12 and post-secondary. Her special interests and research have focused on the relationship between land and place as expressed through written and oral literature. In addition to her many activities, Ms. Benally has a consulting practice that has included work with Foundations including the Ford Foundation, Packard Foundation and James Irvine Foundation. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Western States Arts Federation. Ms. Benally is Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa.

Jeanine M. Canty
BA, Colgate University, International Relations
MA, Prescott College, Cultural Ecopsychology
PhD, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Transformative Learning and Change

Education, awareness and transformation are revered processes for Jeanine. Her work addresses the ecological crisis through critical thinking, unraveling of worldviews, connecting with all of life and changing our practices to be aligned with ecologically healthy modes of being. Her areas of passion include ecopsychology, consciousness, transformative learning, environmental and social justice and cultural studies. She is interested in the process individuals go through to reach heightened awareness of environmental and social justice. Jeanine is involved with multiple social justice and consciousness–based organizations. Much of her understanding has come through her experience as an African American woman living in privileged communities.

Sherry Ellms
BA, University of California, Los Angeles, Psychology
MA, Naropa University, Environmental Leadership

Sherry Ellms is chair of the Environmental Studies Department, teaches a variety of contemplative practices, including meditation, and facilitates earth-based experiences and their application to leadership, earth stewardship and personal sustainability. She leads wilderness solos and other nature-based programs that facilitate a deep connection with the power and insight of the natural world. For the past twenty-five years, she has been conducting retreats and teaching meditation in secular settings such as Outward Bound, as well as in spiritual settings throughout out the country. She teaches an online course, Meditation for Social Change Leaders, in the Ecopsychology concentration of the MA Transpersonal Psychology Program. Sherry is a longtime meditation practitioner and a student of the university’s founder, Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche.. Her master’s thesis was titled "Tonglen as a Tool for Transformative Environmental Engagement." In addition to her contemplative scholarship, she served as Naropa University’s dean of students for twelve years. She has studied with Joanna Macy and trained at the School of Lost Borders. She is committed to investigating the interdependence of landscape and the psyche and facilitating activities that transform human consciousness.

Anne Z. Parker
BS, Conservation of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
MA, Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University
MA, Geography, University of Oregon
PhD, Geography, University of Oregon

Anne Parker is core faculty of the Environmental Studies Department at Naropa University and currently on sabbatical until summer 2010. She has lived, traveled and studied extensively throughout the Himalayas and Central Australia. Before coming to Naropa, she taught geography and international studies at the University of Oregon, was the program director at Interface in Boston, and directed the national Buddhist organization, the Dzogchen Foundation. She has received Fulbright and NSF grants for her work on traditional agriculture in Bhutan, Nepal and India. Anne led wilderness expeditions for many years with the Sierra Club and Marble Mountain Expeditions, and she leads pilgrimages in Tibet, Bhutan and the Himalayan region. Anne has studied and practiced for more than thirty years in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In addition, she has devoted the last six years to extensive study in European earth-based traditions of wicca, druidry and the art of geomancy. She currently consults and teaches in the European tradition of the Master Builders in the Boulder area and via her website www.latitudewithattitude.com. Her new book Stories from the Origin, a series of stories from her life in Australian aboriginal communities, is available at www.amazon.com. She teaches innovative classes in physical and cultural geography in Naropa University’s BA in Environmental Studies. In the MA in Environmental Leadership she teaches leadership skills, the new science, applied leadership and a wilderness solo course. She is passionate about serving life and renewing our connection and deep reverence for the Earth.

Anne Parker’s CV

Read essays by Anne Z. Parker . . .

Adjunct Faculty

Silas Binkley
BA, Arts and Humanities, Colorado State University
MA, Environmental Management and Sustainable Development, University of Queensland
PhD Student, Sustainability Education, Prescott College

Silas Binkley is a fifth-generation Boulder County native who has spent the past six years studying the complex and emergent field of sustainability. Silas devoted four years to leading field courses in the southwest region of the United States and in Mexico for Colorado Mountain College. He has traveled and studied extensively throughout Nepal, India, Indonesia, Australia, Latin America, and Western Europe. In his doctoral studies, Silas is working toward developing a new model of education, one that synthesizes the experiential and sustainability education models and that emphasizes the interdependence of ecological, social and economic balance. He terms this holistic and ecological approach as Experiential Sustainability Education (ESE). Silas is inspired by the ever evolving disciplines of human rights, international relations and transformative education and is interested in how these elements can be brought together to cultivate a more sustainable future.

Kate Mazuy
MA, Naropa University, Transpersonal Counseling Psychology

Kate is a certified Hakomi therapist working in private practice and a teacher in training for the Hakomi Institute. She is the Assistant Director of Naropa’s MA in Wilderness Therapy program. She is also a teacher for Matrixworks/ Living Systems Institute. Kate draws from her experience of over 18 years of facilitating wilderness experiences to help create an environment where individuals and groups can establish deeper connections with themselves, others, and the earth. She is passionate about helping people discover their hidden potential and joy. Her experience includes working with trauma, EMDR, life transitions/ rites of passage work, self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and extreme emotional states.

Susan Skjei
MS, American University
PhD candidate, Fielding Graduate University

Susan Skjei is president of SaneSystems, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational change, coaching and leadership development. Formerly a vice-president and chief learning officer in the high-tech industry, she designs and facilitates participative approaches to strategic planning and organizational transformation. A long-time practitioner of meditation inspired by Naropa’s founder, Trungpa Rinpoche, Susan also teaches meditation workshops for leaders in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
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Joe Soma, MA, MS, CHT, LPC
BA, Biochemistry, University of Scranton
MS, Biochemistry, University of Scranton
MA, Counseling Psychology, Naropa University

Joe has a degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University, an MS in Biochemistry from the University of Scranton, is a certified Hakomi therapist, and is certified in EMDR. He is currently in private psychotherapy practice with offices in Boulder and Denver where he works with individuals, couples, and families.

Joe is a senior adjunct faculty member at Naropa University where he teaches a wide variety of classes in the graduate program. Joe also teaches the MatrixWorks method of working with groups as living systems and has been facilitating groups for the last 13 years.

He has worked in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors as a software engineer, project manager, product manager, departmental manager, and technical director in the high tech, educational delivery, entertainment, and social service industries.

Mark Wilding
BS, State University of New York and Syracuse University
MA, Naropa University

Mark Wilding, MA, is Executive Director of PassageWorks, an innovative educational program focused on youth transitions. Formerly he was Director of the Marpa Center and worked in various capacities at Naropa University for the past ten years including Director of Advancement and Human Resources and Systems Officer. Mark has taught graduate courses at Naropa for eight years and assisted with the launch of the MA in Environmental Leadership program in 1995. In 1985 he helped found a public computer software company and served in several roles until he left as president in 1993.

Visiting Instructor

Joanna Macy
Ph.D.

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism, she has created both a ground-breaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Joanna is an adjunct faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness department. Her books include Mutual Causality in Buddhist Teachings and General Systems Theory; Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World with Molly Young Brown; Widening Circles: A Memoir; and World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewl. In 2007, Dr. Macy received an Outstanding Woman in Buddhism Award, in honor of the United Nations International Women's Day.

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