Phillip Stanley, Co-Chair
BA, University of North Carolina-At-Chapel-Hill
MBA, University of Michigan
MA, University of Virginia
PhD Candidate, University of Virginia

Phillip Stanley received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to research the Tibetan Nyingma nine-vehicle texts. He is Co-Director and authorized teacher of Nitartha Institute that translates and teaches the Kagyu scholastic (shedra) curriculum. He created a catalog database of the Kanjur/Tanjur canonical collections and is placing it online with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, in collaboration with the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (University of Virginia), the Library of Congress, and the British Library. He is on the International Association of Buddhist Universities board. He is writing a book on the Tibetan Buddhist canon and a primer of literary Tibetan.

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

Dr. Thomas B. Coburn, Naropa University's president, served from 1996 to 2002 as the vice president of the university and dean of academic affairs at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. 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.

Roger Dorris, Co-Chair
AAS, BA, Metropolitan State College of Denver
MA, The Naropa Institute
PhD, Union Institute and University

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.

Archarya Tenpa Gyaltsen
Ka Rabjampa, Nalanda Institute

Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen excelled in his studies at the Institute under some of the greatest living masters in the Kagyu lineage. Acharya Tenpa served for several years as the resident teacher of Thegsum Tashi Chöling in Hamburg, Germany. Acharya Tenpa teaches extensively in the Tibetan Tradition track of courses.

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.

Victoria Howard
BA, Barnard College of Columbia University
PhD, Clinical Psychology, Union Institute

Victoria Howard is a Buddhist minister in the Shambhala tradition. She has worked extensively with the aged and the dying and co-founded and co-directed Dana Home Care, a national, nonprofit organization providing in-home care for frail seniors. She currently teaches in the Master of Divinity program at Naropa. Dr. Howard has assisted in the development of a number of innovative senior care residences and consults for elder care agencies and facilities in the Denver-Metro area. She also works with Hospice of Boulder County.

Rabbi Miles Krassen
BA, St. John's College (Annapolis, MD)
MA, Indiana University
MA, University of Pennsylvania
PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Rabbi Krassen completed his undergraduate studies in the Great Books of the Western World Program at St. John's in 1967. After receiving his BA, Dr. Krassen studied Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. During the next ten years, he became internationally known as the author of five books on Appalachian and Celtic fiddle music. In 1977, he began rabbinic studies with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and received ordination in 1996.

In 1982, he received an MA in Religious Studies at Indiana University, specializing in Kabbalah and Comparative Mysticism. He was a Lady Davis Fellow and Visiting-Research Scholar in the Dept. of Kabbalah and Hasidism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1985 to 1987. In 1990, he completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Krassen has taught at Smith College, Temple University and at Oberlin College, where he served as director of the Jewish Studies Program. He is the author of Uniter of Heaven and Earth, a study of mystical experience and non-duality in early Hasidism and his annotated translation of a major kabbalistic text, Isaiah Horowitz: Generations of Adam, is a volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

Reginald A. Ray
BA, Williams College
PhD, University of Chicago

Reginald Ray came to Naropa University in 1974 to inaugurate the Buddhist Studies (now Religious Studies) Department. He has received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and two N.E.H. Senior Research Fellowships. He is a member of the Nalanda Translation Committee and was among the first group of senior teachers of the Shambhala lineage. He leads meditation programs, including month long contemplative practice retreats, in Crestone, Colorado. His book, Buddhist Saints in India, received a national book award from the American Academy of Religion. He has recently published two books on Tibetan Buddhism, Indestructible Truth and Secret of the Vajra World.

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

Judith Simmer-Brown has been a core faculty member in Religious Studies at the university since 1978. She lectures and writes on Tibetan Buddhism, women and Buddhism, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and American Buddhism, and is an Acharya (senior dharma teacher) in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. She is on the Board of the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies and a member of the Lilly Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. Her books are Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (Shambhala, 2001), and with Brother David Steindl-Rast, et. al., Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Comment on the Rule of St. Benedict (Riverhead, 2001).

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:

The Dzogchen Ponlop, Rinpoche; Sylvia Boorstien, John Daido Lorri

Adjunct Faculty:

Acharya Dale Asrael (core TCP), Frank Berliner (core Contemplative Psychology), Sreedevi Bringi, Jane Carpenter-Cohn (core Contemplative Psychology), Patrick D'Silva, Jirka Hladis, David Frenette, Rabbi Victor Gross, Gaylon Ferguson (Core Program), Fr. Alan Hartway (Core Program), Rabbi Howard Hoffman, , Rabbi Zvi Ish-shalmom, Giovannina Jobson, Tharpa Lowry, Fleet Maull, Andrew Schelling (core Writing and Poetics), Robert Spellman (core Visual Arts), L. S. Summer, Leota Ann Voll, Gerry Shishin Wick, Roshi, Stephanie Yuhas

Administrative Director:

John Weber

Undergraduate Advisor:

Amy Ryk

Graduate Advisor:

Giovannina Jobson