Visiting Instructors

Our visiting instructors come from all walks of life and bring rich personalities and intriguing materials to ACES. Read their short life stories below, take a course, learn, and further explore their fields of expertise.

Robin Blankenship owns and operates Earth Knack and has been working in the outdoor field since 1978 when she began leading horse packing trips into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness for Adventure Unlimited Ranches, eventually directing their mountaineering program. She began teaching for Larry Olsen's School of Urban and Wilderness Survival in 1984, the National Outdoor Leadership School, and Outward Bound. She holds a B.A. in English Literature, a minor in Spanish from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a B.S. in Education, with a Colorado elementary teaching certification.
Robin is teaching a two-day survival skills course on July 10-11, 2008.

Andrea Booher, photojournalist and film producer, has worked as an international photographer for twenty years. Based in Aspen, Colorado, her assignments have taken her to East Africa, Latin America, Micronesia, India, and throughout the United States. In the last sixteen years, Booher has worked as a photographer documenting disasters for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the last two decades she has covered every major disaster in the U.S. and Indian nations. In 2001, she spent 10 weeks working at Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attack. She was one of two photographers with unlimited access. Her work from 9-11 was published in magazines, newspapers, and documentaries worldwide. She was personally profiled on NPR, The History Channel, CNN, Camera Arts, and Photo District News. In addition to her disaster work and news photos, Andrea Booher’s travel and environmental profile photography is represented by Getty Images. Her international assignments have included photographing the war in Somalia, the Flying Doctors of East Africa, and United Nations projects in India and Africa. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, LIFE, Traveler, GEO, Outside, Sports Illustrated for Women, Smithsonian, Stern, Atlantic Monthly, and numerous other books and periodicals.
Andrea is teaching this year's weeklong photo workshop from July 14-18, 2008.

Dr. Boyce Drummond is a biological consultant and visiting Associate Professor at Colorado College. He is a Research Associate at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Gillette Museum of Arthropod Biodiversity at Colorado State University, and the Florida State Collection of Arthropods at the University of Florida. A past Director of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, Dr. Drummond is co-author of Florissant Butterflies: A Guide to Fossil and Present-day Species of Central Colorado.
Boyce is teaching a two-day course about bugs on August 11-12, 2008.

Dr. John Emerick has retired from the environmental faculty at the Colorado School of Mines, where he taught for over 22 years. He has conducted research and taught field classes on tundra and forest ecology, wetlands, aquatic ecosystems, as well as our southwestern desert environments. He has taught numerous field ecology courses for ACES, Rocky Mountain Nature Association, National Audubon Society, University of Colorado, and Colorado School of Mines. He is the author of From Grassland to Glacier, the Natural History of Colorado, and Rocky Mountain National Park Natural History Handbook. He now lives in Redstone, works as an ecological consultant, and still finds time to teach field ecology courses for ACES.
John is teaching a two-day course about forest ecology on August 5-6, 2008.

Suzanne Farver earned a B.A. in Economics from Grinnell College and a J.D. from the University of Denver and is best known in Aspen for her tenure as director of the Aspen Art Museum from 1992-1999. She also has been involved in environmental causes for most of her life, and as of June 2008 expects to receive a Masters degree in Environmental Management from Harvard University. With a particular interest in greening the built environment, she has helped the Aspen Chapel and ACES develop programs to reduce their carbon footprint. She has also been in the process of greening her own home, reducing her overall electricity demand by 2/3 through efficiency improvements and solar PV panels, as well as installing hot water solar panels for heating. Suzanne serves on the Board of Trustees of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Suzanne is teaching a course about greening your home this summer on July 29, 2008. She will follow up with a multi-week evening workshop this Fall from Sept 23-Oct 21, 2008.

Marcia Fusaro was born in New Jersey into a family of painters that can trace its ancestry back to the famous English Expressionist, J.M.W.Turner. After graduating from Northwestern University, she studied classical painting at the Art Students League in New York City. Her post-graduate travels eventually brought her to Aspen where she married and raised two daughters. She continues to paint and study in workshops with well-known artists, including Albert Handel, Scott Christensen, and Kim English. While the western landscape and its wildlife continue to inspire both her pastels and oils, she is also well-known for her commissioned portraits of people and animals, with a specialty in Equine and sporting art. Her work hangs in private collections from Coast to Coast, and she is represented by The Basalt Gallery in Basalt, and The Blue Horse Gallery in Bellingham, Washington. Her awards and achievements include: 2006 first place in the Colorado Pastel Society’s Spring Show, 2007 first place at Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival, a major portrait commission of the late Frank Starbuck for Colorado Mountain College in Rifle, and her work has been juried into Colorado Pastel Society's Mile High National Exhibition.
Marcia is teaching a three-day course about nature portraits on June 30-July 2, 2008.

David Hiser is a photojournalist and photo educator who has led workshops and seminars throughout North America. His photography has appeared in more than 100 National Geographic publications and is represented internationally by Getty Images. His website is at www.photoaspen.com.
David is teaching a weekend photo workshop at Toklat on July 5-6, 2008.