Master of Divinity Faculty

Roger Dorris is currently doing doctoral work in the field of engaged Buddhist studies with a focus on community-building and large-group transformation. He has worked extensively with marginalized populations including the homeless, those incarcerated and those suffering from addiction. He's been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism since the mid-70's and was ordained as a Buddhist minister in 1999. He has been core faculty at Naropa University since 1995 where he helped establish the MA Engaged Buddhism and Master of Divinity programs.

Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen
Ka Rabjampa, Nalanda Institute

Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen excelled in his studies at Karma Shri Nalanda Institute of Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim under some of the greatest living masters in the Kagyü lineage. He then completed the traditional three year retreat. Acharya Tenpa served for several years as the resident teacher of Thegsum Tashi Chöling in Hamburg, Germany. He is a senior teacher of the Nitartha Institute, which presents the teachings of the Tibetan monastic educational tradition to westerners.

Sarah Harding
BA, Naropa University

Sarah Harding is a lama in the Shangpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, completing the first three-year retreat for westerners in 1980 under H.E. Kalu Rinpoche. She works as a teacher, oral interpreter and translator. She has published many of her translations, including Creation and Completion and Machik's Complete Explanation. She has been an instructor in the Religious Studies Department since 1992. She is currently working on translations as a fellow of the Tsadra Foundation and continues to run her Tibetan Lanaguage Correspondence Course.

Zvi Ish-shalom
BA, McGill University
MA, Brandeis University
PhD (cand.), Brandeis University

Rabbi Zvi Ish-Shalom descends from a long lineage of rabbis in the mystical tradition of Hasidism. He trained in rabbinical schools in New York and Israel and was ordained as a rabbi in both the Orthodox and neo-Hasidic traditions. Before coming to Naropa University he served for four and a half years as the rabbi for Congregation Har Shalom in Fort Collins, Colorado. His current areas of academic interest include: Comparative Mysticism, Kabbalah, Hasidism, East-West Studies, Psychology of Religion, Somatic Spirituality, and Contemplative Ecumenism, inter alia. Rabbi Zvi is also a Certified Rolfer® and has a contemplative bodywork practice in Boulder.

Don Matthews
B.S. Northwestern University
M.A. Northwestern University Graduate School M.Div. Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA Ph.D. The Divinity School, The University of Chicago

Donald Matthews received his Ph.D in Religion and Human Sciences with concentrations in The Sociology and Psychology of Religion; and Theological Ethics. He has taught at numerous universities and seminaries in the areas of Religion and Society, African American Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology. His clinical training includes certification in Clinical Pastoral Education and as a licensed Speech and Language Pathologist. His current research interests are in the abuse of power, social oppression; and ministry to the homeless. Dr. Matthews has published in the fields of pastoral care, African American religion and social ethics. He was ordained by the United Methodist Church.

Judith Simmer-Brown
BA, Cornell College
MA, Florida State University
PhD, Walden University
PhD Candidate, Columbia University

Judith Simmer-Brown, Ph.D., has been Professor of Religious Studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado since 1978. She has served on Cauldron, Naropa's faculty senate, since 2008, and was Chair during 2010-2011. She is an Acharya (senior dharma teacher) of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage of Sakyong Mipham, Rinpoche and Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Naropa's founder. She is Dean of the Shambhala Teachers' Academy. She serves on the steering committee of the American Academy of Religion's Contemplative Studies group. Her books are Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (Shambhala 2001) and Meditation in the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (SUNY 2011).

Phillip Stanley
BA, University of North Carolina-At-Chapel-Hill
MBA, University of Michigan; MA, University of Virginia;
PhD, University of Virginia.

Phillip Stanley is dean of academic affairs for Nitartha Institute, a member of the Executive Council of the International Association of Buddhist Universities, and co-director of the Tibetan Buddhist Canonical Collections Cataloging Project of the Tibetan Himalayan Library that will launch an online catalog of multiple editions of the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur collections with links to scans of all 5,000 plus texts in the summer of 2009. He has been selected to lead the Union Catalog of Buddhist Texts project that will launch a prototype online catalog of all the major Buddhist canonical collections by 2011. He received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for doctoral research on the nine-vehicle texts of the Nyingma school of Tibet. A member of the Nalanda Translation Committee, he has been a student of Trungpa Rinpoche since 1974 and has taught Buddhism and Shambhala Training since 1981. He is writing a book on the canons of Buddhism and the history of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He developed the first-year primer of literary Tibetan used at Naropa.

Emeritus Faculty:

Thomas B. Coburn, President Emeritus
BA, Princeton University
MA, Harvard University
PhD, Harvard University

Dr. Thomas B. Coburn served as Naropa University's president from 2003 to 2009 and as the vice president of the university and dean of academic affairs at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, from 1996 to 2002. He was also the Charles A. Dana professor of religious studies and had served on the faculty since 1974. Dr. Coburn is a renowned scholar and academician in the field of religious studies and is a widely published author specializing in South and East Asia and the Islamic world. He is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Hindu tradition of the great goddess. Dr. Coburn also spent time as the director of the New York State Independent College Consortium for Study in India, was a visiting faculty member on the University of Pittsburgh Semester at Sea and spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
PhD, Hebrew Union College

Rabbi Schachter has held the World Wisdom chair at Naropa University and is professor emeritus at Temple Institute. He is a major figure in the Jewish spiritual renewal movement, presenting the central teachings of Hassidism and Kabbalah in a contemporary and heartfelt manner. He was ordained in 1947 and received a PhD. in 1968 from Hebrew Union College. He has published over 150 articles and monographs on the Jewish spiritual life, and has translated many Hassidic and Kabbalistic texts. In 1989 Rabbi Schachter founded the Spiritual Eldering Institute to meet the needs of the current generation of elders.

Guest Faculty:

Ven. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
Ven. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is acknowledged as one of the foremost scholars and educators of his generation in the Nyingma and Kagyü schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He received the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages of teachings and employees from His Holiness Karmapa, H. H. Dilgo Khyentse, Rinpoche, and other great teachers.

H. H. the 16th Karmapa recognized him as a reincarnate master, the 7th in the line of the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoches. Rinpoche founded and continues to direct Nitartha International, Nalandabodhi and the Nitartha Institute, which focus, respectively, on the preservation of endangered ancient texts, study and meditation training, and traditional Buddhist education.

Ven. Khenpo Anyen, Rinpoche
Ven. Khenpo Anyen, Rinpoche is a tulku from Amdo, Tibet, and is an esteemed scholar as well as the fifth lineage in an unbroken lineage of heart sons who received their uncommon lineage of the Longchen Nyingthig and introduction to the Dzogchen teachings directly from the renowned Dzogchen master Patrul Rinpoche. Anyen Rinpoche's training included more than fourteen years of intensive study combined with solitary retreat before he obtained the degree of khenpo and became the head scholar of his root Lama's monastic university in Kham, Tibet.

Ranked Faculty from Other Departments:

Acharya Dale Asrael (Transpersonal Counseling Psychology), Jane Carpenter (Contemplative Psychology), Acharya Gaylon Ferguson(Interdisciplinary Studies),
Fr. Alan Hartway (Interdisciplinary Studies),Andrew Schelling (Writing and Poetics), Robert Spellman (Visual Arts), Candace Walworth (Peace Studies)

Adjunct Faculty:

Sreedevi Bringi, Patrick D’Silva, David Frenette, Stephen Hatch, Rabbi Howard Hoffman, Giovannina Jobson, Jeremy Lowry, Rev. Penny Rather, L. S. Summer, Gerry Shishin Wick Roshi, Stephanie Yuhas.

Administrative Director:

John Weber

Undergraduate Advisor:

Gwen Robeson

Graduate Advisor:

Giovannina Jobson

site map contact faculty & staff employment