Faculty & Staff Profiles

Chris Taylor became Head of School in July 2010. He lives on campus with his wife, Ginger, and their dog, Hildy. Chris is the product of independent school education as a graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School. He has earned degrees from the University of Rochester, Wesleyan University, and Harvard University. In addition to studying at Edinburgh University in Scotland, Chris had the honor of being a Visiting Fellow at the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

During his seventeen years as a headmaster, Chris has lived in Colorado, England, Louisiana, and Kansas. His career has been as a leader in strategic planning, faculty development, enrollment growth, fundraising, and campus expansion. Along with his teaching and administrative career, Chris also was the national director of youth services for Sierra Club in San Francisco, California.

Chris and Ginger have two grown sons and live on campus in the Whittum House. As a fly fishing enthusiast, biker, hiker, and skier, Chris makes the most all the wonderful outdoor options that Steamboat Springs offers.

Señorita Berg grew up in Colorado and ventured out to California to study International Studies and Spanish at Pepperdine University. In an effort to use her Spanish in the real world, Hayley spent her sophomore year of college living with a host family in Buenos Aires, Argentina and then one summer interning at the Embassy of Peru in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation Hayleylived with a Spanish host-sister and taught English in a small town near Sevilla, Spain. Hayley recently graduated with her Master of Arts in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she also spent four semesters teaching college-level Spanish.

Apart from teaching Español, Hayley enjoys singing with the Yampa Valley Singers, traveling (to 17 countries and counting), cats, and spending time with her friends, family, and boyfriend. Having worked as a camp counselor and resident advisor Hayley is very excited to get to know the students and faculty at Lowell Whiteman.

Although seeded, gestated and delivered in the hills of Central Texas, Kelly Cockrell took root in the mountains of northern New Mexico where she cultivated and harvested an enriching career in web design and computer repair. Five years ago, Kelly found a love of teaching young people when she moved to the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, and taught at a private school. Now entering her 17th year in information technology, Kelly is excited to help integrate new technology and wonder into LWS.

The path that led Erin Gilbertson Davis to the French classroom of LWS might have been a bicycle trail. Her work as a biking guide along the Tour de France, her experience living abroad, and her college degree in French language and literature from Whitman College firmly established her as LWS’s specialiste francaise. Mrs. Davis has traveled the globe extensively in Europe, the Americas and Asia, many times chaperoning LWS Global Immersion Studies trips. She has been to Canada, Mexico, France, England, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, India, Senegal, Honduras, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Costa Rica. The former collegiate alpine ski racer has coached local SSWSC youth for 10 years, and is an avid mountain bike rider. When she’s not teaching, coaching or riding her bike, Mrs. Davis prefers to be in the kitchen pursuing her baking passion, playing her cello, practicing yoga and African dance. Other past-times are her baby paraphernalia company (Baby BonBon) and the children’s books she has written and hopes one day to publish. Erin and her husband Tom welcomed son, Henry Beckett Davis into their lives in August of 2010.

Her research on the effects of logging in Routt National Forest as a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder may have spurred Miss Durkan’s interest in Steamboat Springs and its alpine ecosystem. As the Environmental Science and Chemistry teacher, Miss Durkan’s diverse field experience also spans beyond the woods to waters. She worked previously as a naturalist for the Pacific Whale Foundation, becoming an expert on reef ecology, local marine mammals such as the Humpback Whale, the geology of the Hawaiian Islands, and local green sea turtles. Following a coral reef ecology course with field experience diving in Cozumel, she received her SCUBA certification and also learned to free-dive up to 40+ feet for extended periods of time. Ms. Durkan studied abroad in Italy and has traveled throughout Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and France. The Advanced Placement Environmental Science class can be found all over campus, collecting water and soil samples, planting seedlings to prevent erosion, and monitoring wetlands. She maintains the school library as a comfortable center for study and research. She’s an avid skier, whether it’s cross-country, alpine, or snowboarding and she loves to hike and bike in the summertime.

Eric Einstein moved to Steamboat Springs from Colorado Springs where he studied Psychology and Education at The Colorado College. Eric enjoys the outdoors, skiing, hiking, and the arts. His interests have led him to the Lowell Whiteman School where is excited to be teaching Art, Film, Photography, Music and Performing Arts, as well as working as a Residential Assistant in Kakela Dorm with his dog, Kiwi. Eric attended intensive arts schools in Toronto beginning at an early age, and has enriched his photo and video experience through his travel and nonprofit work. Eric’s love of art, drama, music, and dance continues to play a large role in his life, from singing acappella and performing musical theater in college, to dancing and drumming with friends in Ghana, India, and the other 22 countries in which he has traveled.

After living aboard their sailboat and travelling the east coast from Florida to Newfoundland and Labrador for the last three years husband and wife, Jay Readinger and Mary Lou Gallup, join the school as the business management team.

Jay grew up traveling from coast to coast as the son of a career US Navy submarine sailor, visiting all fifty states. His love of the outdoors began as a Boy Scout in Hawaii and continued through Hurricane Island Outward Bound School and the National Outdoor Leadership School from which he holds instructor certification. Early in his educational career Jay was a boarding school triple threat: teaching, coaching, and living in the dorm. While serving a one of several schools in his career in New England, Jay took on the duties of the business manager and has continued in that career tack since. His formal education took him to Northeastern University in Boston on a football and track scholarship, and then later to Rhode Island College in Providence, RI where he earned a Masters in Educational Leadership. Readinger worked for the Maine Department of Education as a specialist in educational facilities, and was a superintendent of schools in Maine.

Mary Lou’s background includes private school business management, development of an after-school program, and most recently Program Officer of Maine Power Options, where she coordinated Maine’s largest energy purchasing consortium. Her work included negotiating the state’s first renewable electricity contracts and arranging energy contracts for all of Maine’s major colleges including Bowdoin, Colby, Bates and the University of Maine. Mary Lou’s future aspirations include participating in her daughter’s organic farm as farm accountant and cut-flower gardener.

Jay and Mary Lou have four grown children and six grandchildren including the newest one born in July 2011 on the front range. They live on campus and are very happy to be in beautiful Steamboat Springs.

Claire has spent a mostly nomadic life traveling and living around the world where she has spent extensive time in the Congo (DRC), Belgium, Bethesda, MD, Maine, and San Francisco with many summer and study abroad stints in Central and South America—Costa Rica, Honduras, Chile, and Argentina. She is absolutely thrilled to find herself in the beautiful Rockies at the Lowell Whiteman School. Having studied Spanish and Education at Bates College in Maine, Claire is excited to pursue these two passions at Whiteman where she will be teaching Spanish as well as living in Elizabeth Hall as the Residential Assistant.

Claire is also looking forward to taking advantage of all that Steamboat has to offer whether that is skiing, hiking, rock climbing, biking, or simply enjoying being outside in all its natural beauty. In addition to these activities Claire also loves sketching, drawing, and painting. She finds Steamboat’s landscape to be a perfect and very willing model to fill the pages of her sketchbook.

Having recently migrated to the western slope from Colorado's front range, Adam is thrilled to join the staff at the Lowell Whiteman School. Born and raised in Colorado, he truly enjoys everything the state has to offer including camping, hiking, mountain biking, fishing, backpacking, kayaking, and rock climbing. During winter months, Adam loves to go snowboarding, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, snow cave camping, ice fishing, and snowmobiling. His diverse life experiences include employment ranging from Security officer for high tech industrial buildings, Park Ranger at Eldorado Canyon State Park near Boulder, insurance adjuster in Nashville, TN, to a residential/commercial electrician. In his spare time Adam likes to work with wood. He has built several kayaks, an arbor for his sisters wedding, and escapes to Taos, NM to continue building his cabin. He occasionally strums the guitar and is attempting to learn the banjo. Adam loves to learn new things and strives to keep a positive outlook on life.

After having spent a couple of years teaching in Lake Placid and Boulder, Sarah is thrilled to be back at LWS and says there is no other place she'd rather teach and live. Sarah works as the college counselor, teaches English, and is the RH of Elizabeth Hall. When Sarah isn't chatting colleges, delving into the wonders of Hemingway's icebergs, or baking treats for the dorm, she enjoys running, Manic training, writing children's stories, African dancing, and singing. She earned her B.A. from Northwestern University and is currently finishing her M.A. at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English.

Nuala was born and raised in Southern California and recently moved from the Santa Ynez Valley. Nuala has lived on a boarding school campus for the last twenty-three years and worked as a learning specialist for the last seventeen. Nuala moved to Colorado with her husband Randy and daughter Hanna this July. She and her family are enjoying the beautiful Steamboat valley and look forward to partaking in the many sport opportunities the valley and Colorado offer.

Randy grew up in Illinois, but has lived west of the Rookies since the early 80’s. The western states offer the skiing, kayaking rivers, mountains, and climbing areas that have become his haunting ground. In 1985, he joined the faculty at Dunn School, in California, teaching science and developing an outdoor program. A year later, he became the Director of Outdoor Education, and created and expanded the outdoor program to become one of the first high schools with AEE Accreditation. After twenty-six years, he decided that a new adventure was needed, and is hoping to put his educational experitse to great use here at The Lowell Whiteman School.

When not teaching, Joanne “Doc” Lasko loves to play the piano and to compose music. Her AP English students will readily attest to her claim to being a ‘Shakespeare freak.’ She is passionate about the English language, and few leave her class without developing a passion for it as well. Doc spent childhood time living abroad in Germany and Lebanon. She attended Duke University and earned her undergraduate degree in English from Pomona College in California and ultimately her Ph.D. in Literary Studies, with the interdisciplinary field of Music, from the American University in Washington, D.C. Prior to coming to LWS, she taught at the American University and at The Madeira School in Greenway, Virginia. “Doc” has been with LWS for more than two-and-a-half decades, and she is dedicated to education, education, education. With Doc, students learn there are no shortcuts, only hard work, and she teaches this philosophy with a rare sense of humor and an understanding of every student’s challenges. She is patient, she is calm in a crisis, and she is tireless in her guidance of the LWS academic program. She is also an experienced foreign travel leader. She loves skiing, horses, and camping and is apt to head off to a hunting cabin on a snowmobile to reread Hamlet, which she admits to having read more times than any other sane human – and she still loves it.

Geography and math teacher Jim Linville grew up on a ranch and summer camp in Conifer, Colorado. Valedictorian of his high school class, Mr. Linville attended Colorado State University on a Boettcher Foundation Scholarship. After graduation, he spent four years as a volunteer in Kenya building domestic water systems and supervising road construction. His love of the outdoors began when he worked for the US Forest Service as an engineer of water and reservoir systems. During his college career, he attended the Ecole National Superieur de Mecanique de Nantes and Institut d’etudes Europeens, priming him for his first position at LWS more than 20 years ago as a French teacher. In addition to speaking French fluently, Mr. Linville is also proficient in Swahili. He became interested in backcountry rescue as a National Ski Patrolman at Powderhorn Ski Area. Currently, he is an EMT, has a Wilderness First Aid certification, and has been a member of Routt County Search and Rescue for 15 years. He is passionate about geography, foreign culture and the environment. To Mr. Linville, the world is a classroom and he has led more than 15 foreign trips for LWS.

After directing admissions and enrollment at Santa Fe Prep for 14 years, Marta and her family relocated to Steamboat Springs for their next school/life adventure.

We call her “Margi,” as she considers “Mrs. Missling-Root” too formal for her job description. Margi has 23 years of experience in outdoor education, and her specialty is educating high school students about the natural world. She has been a backcountry instructor and guide and since 1988, and she has led a foreign trip for LWS almost every year. There are few continents Margi has not traveled thoroughly. The programs she manages include outdoor activities of all kinds, camping, and foreign travel. Margi feels the tops of mountains and the shores of foreign locales feed the souls of our students. Having a keen interest in plants, she is also the school’s landscape designer as well as the school’s acreage manager. Margi is also a firm believer in the mind body connection; she studies natural healing and meditation. She raised her son, Bridger (LWS `07) on campus, and she tells the story of an LWS foreign trip on which Russian nomads offered her multiple camels (a very high price!!) for baby Bridger. She loves to sing, play the guitar, meditate, garden, garden, garden, backcountry ski, snowshoe, and take walks with her very smart dog, Diamond.

English teacher John Morse likes to combine his joy for learning in the classroom with an active outdoor lifestyle.  He is part of the reason his students learn to enjoy the combination, as well.  He regularly assists fellow teacher, Jim Linville, with the school’s kayak program, and he is an avid mountain biker and former ski instructor. Prior to joining the LWS faculty, Mr. Morse attended NOLS (the National Outdoor Leadership School) in Patagonia and taught school in rural Alaska. He received the DeWitt-Wallace scholarship to attend Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English for his Master’s degree and studied at Oxford.  He enjoys Shakespeare, neuroscience and its connections to education, and Hubble photographs of the universe.

Meg Morse spends her time as the Academic Dean and Algebra II teacher. Having led the Vietnam/Combodia Global Immersion Studies trip four times, she is the school’s resident expert on Southeast Asia. Mrs. Morse received her graduate degree in English from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English, and spent two of her five Breadloaf summers studying Shakespeare at its Oxford University campus. A former college lacrosse player, she coached lacrosse at the Westminster School in Connecticut. She is an accomplished chef, loves to knit and spend time with her son, Toby. She served as the school’s Director of College Counseling from 2000 to 2011. As the Academic Dean, Mrs. Morse also directs the Global Immersion Studies program.

Jared has a BA from Bates College in political science and history and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Ben Gurion University. An avid climber, backpacker and telemark skier, he will try most things more than once, especially if he fails the first time. Jared creates experimental gardens in his spare time borrowing as much as he can from his Permaculture Design Certificate. When forced indoors, Jared, a self-proclaimed "foodie," enjoys cooking. He also loves non-fiction reading, from topics ranging from ecological history to evolutionary psychology.

Physics and Calculus teacher Brian Smith is committed to exercising in the LWS classroom the topic of his current Masters of Mathematics research project: How to help students more efficiently and effectively communicate in mathematics. The graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University joined LWS in 2000 as a teaching/dorm fellow. He spent five years as a dorm parent in addition to his teaching duties . He is working on his Master’s degree with an emphasis on teaching, from the University of Northern Colorado. He launched a school GPS program and has spent summers with a community mapping program. Mr. Smith leads LWS Foreign trips and has recently traveled with students to Costa Rica, Mongolia, and South Africa. He has also led many outdoor experiential trips for canoeing, mountain biking, whitewater rafting and horseback riding. A member of the Steamboat Rugby Club, Mr. Smith played Division III football in college and coached middle and high school wrestling for five years. He leads an after-school activity called “Manic Workout,” and it is not a program for slouches. He also directs the LWS Recreational Ski/Ride program.

Since moving to Steamboat in the fall of 2008, Abbie Lane has developed an absolute enthusiasm for this community, its history, and its culture. She is an avid rock climber, marathon runner, backpacker, and skate skier, and loves to flyfish (despite not catching anything...yet) with her golden retriever pup, Bolo.

Abbie completed her undergraduate degrees in Religious Studies, Journalism, and Business and graduate degree in Religious Studies at CU-Boulder. Her thesis work focused on American religion and culture and its relationship to the environment in terms of sacred space, particularly concentrating on National Parks as the natural world’s last frontier.

Prior to moving to Steamboat, Abbie spent time in Nicaragua, researching ecotourism and working as a media correspondent for the Peruvian Navy. Abbie spent several years working in Yellowstone National Park as the Lake Yellowstone Hotel Assistant General Manager, bellhop, and R12 Bombardier tour guide. Most recently, she served as a domestic and criminal law paralegal at a local firm.

Gina Wither plays a dual role at LWS as Life Sciences teacher and liaison for the school’s Competitive Ski & Ride Program with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SSWSC). She teaches Biology, and Anatomy and Physiology. Once the snow flies and the winter competitive season start, Mrs. Wither is busy coordinating academic and competitive schedules for athletes. She also accompanies students for extended training programs abroad. Mrs. Wither is active in local theater and a member of the professional juggling troupe We're Not Clowns. She lives on campus with her husband Scott, and their young son Owen. On many mornings, she loves to sled down a rather steep hill to school from the Lockwood Faculty House. She loves skiing, mountain biking, baking bread, and listening to John Denver.

After graduating from LWS ('00), Kevin went on to pursue his love of languages and travel at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Inspired by the global view fostered at LWS Kevin received his B.A.s in International Affairs and Chinese (while studying Russian and Arabic). He continued on living and working with languages and China over the next several years. In 2012 he lovingly came back to LWS to help support the school as Director of Alumni Relations. In his spare time Kevin loves to cook, learn languages, meditate, and read.