Faculty

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.

Frank Berliner
BA, Yale University
MA, Naropa University

Frank Berliner is a core faculty member in the Contemplative Psychology Department and a psychotherapist and organizational consultant in private practice, specializing in communication training and conflict resolution. Frank has been a student of Naropa’s founder, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, since Naropa's opening session in summer 1974. He studied the psychology and practice of meditation intensively for four years at the Karme Choling Buddhist Retreat Center, then served three years as national director of Shambhala Training and four years as director and teacher-in-residence of the Berkeley Shambhala Center.

John Davis
BA, Wake Forest University
MA, University of Colorado, Boulder
PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder

John Davis is a professor and former chair of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department at Naropa University. He is also the director of the low-residency MA in Transpersonal Psychology at Naropa. The author of The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teaching of A.H. Almaas, John has also been published on the topics of transpersonal psychology, ecopsychology, wilderness rites of passage and research methods. Read John Davis’s article We Keep Asking Ourselves: What is Transpersonal Psychology? www.johnvdavis.com

Glenn Hartelius
PhD (cand.)

Glenn Hartelius, PhD (cand.), is a writer, counselor and adjunct professor at Naropa University.  He has taught transpersonal psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California, where he is currently completing his doctorate in East-West Psychology.  At Laney College in Oakland he has used the first introductory-level psychology textbook to include a major emphasis on transpersonal and holistic psychology.  He served as lead author on a recent article published in The Humanist Psychologist (Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007) that develops a concise, comprehensive, historically-rooted definition of the subject area of transpersonal psychology. In addition, he has been invited to co-author the entry on transpersonal psychology in the upcoming 4th edition of Corsini’s Encyclopedia of Psychology.  As a clinician in somatic and integral therapies, his work spans more than 25 years.  His vision is to integrate the insights of participatory transpersonalism, somatics, interdisciplinary consciousness studies and phenomenology into powerful new models and clinical approaches for the larger field of psychology.

Colleen Stewart
MA, Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, Naropa University
BEd, University of Alberta

Colleen is an adjunct faculty member for the MATP program. She is a graduate of Naropa’s Transpersonal Counseling Psychology program and has been a staff member here for over five years. Her interests include issues concerning death and dying, specifically with children. She was also an international student coming from Canada, so she is sensitive to the issues associated with international study.

Jed Scott Swift

Jed Scott Swift, MA, is both the director of the Ecopsychology Concentration within the low residency Master’s in Transpersonal Psychology (MATP) at Naropa and a full time faculty in the MATP program. Jed has also been a graduate advisor for the past thirteen years for the Prescott College Master of Arts Program in Arizona. The courses he teaches at these institutions include: ecopsychology; transpersonal psychology in the wilderness; deep ecology; wilderness rites of passage; nature, the sacred & contemplation; transpersonal service learning and master’s paper online. In addition, Jed has previously been a wilderness rites of passage guide with over fifteen years experience successfully guiding hundreds of teens and adults on spirited wilderness quests in the Utah Canyonlands and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He has also authored a chapter in The Soul Unearthed, edited by Cass Adams. Jed and his wife Dianne and nine year old daughter Anna Gabriel live in Columbus, Ohio.

Soltahr Tiv-Amanda

Soltahr is a therapist in private practice in Boulder as well as working as the Director of the Outreach program at the Safe Shelter of St. Vrain Valley in Longmont. She has taught Multicultural coursework in various capacities at Naropa University since 1999. She also teaches at CU Boulder and Regis University. She has published a journal article in the Journal of Counseling and Development. She is a certified Reiki Master as well as a named Healing Woman in the Hopi healing tradition where she studied healing ceremony with her teacher Moonhawk. She is a Certified Mindfulness Instructor for Naropa University, and has been a priestess for the last 23 years in the Pagan Earth Centered Tradition. She is one of the featured healers in the 2001 book by Carol Kronwitter: Women of Grace--Women Healers and Healing Practices.