Staff Profiles

Susan Visser, Executive Director PRCLC

BS, Horticulture Science– Ohio State University
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Susan came to Colorado from Ohio—by way of Florida, Massachusetts, Idaho, and probably other states in-between. Her expertise in small business ownership and management led to nonprofits, but her agricultural, small-town background fits aptly the challenges and rewards of life in rural Colorado. Inspired by her father’s model, himself a lifelong learner, Susan believes choice is the central value we can nourish: the power to choose one’s goals, choose to earn and fulfill them, to enlarge opportunity or push boundaries, to fail, persist, renew, and succeed. Cultivating these options is the chief purpose of education, thinking beyond the box while sharpening practical skills.

For Susan, learning is a form of ongoing engagement with people and communities, and she is therefore involved in manifold civic efforts:

• Board of Directors, Four Corners Volleyball Club
• Board of Directors, Ignacio Chamber of Commerce
• Southwest Colorado Workforce Board
• La Plata County/CSU Extension Service Advisory Committee
• the Ignacio Bike Week Advisory Committee.

She is a member of the Durango Area Non-Profit Association, Colorado Adult Education Professional Association, the Commission on Adult Basic Education, and ProLiteracy.

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Jackie Candelaria, Lead Teacher PRCLC

BA, Education – Colorado State University
Colorado State Teacher licensure
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Jackie knows Colorado: a native of the state, having worked at public schools as well as for the Denver Post, and as a homemaker for a growing family, she and her husband Robert represent something almost legendary in Ignacio. She knows, for example, that it pays to be in a food co-op.

One night after a co-op meeting, someone called out asking for anyone who might have a teaching certificate—Jackie answered, and so began an astonishing 23-year career working with adults and families in education. Like many of us in the field, the job found her, but the passion of supporting and teaching adults the skills for reading, writing, and math success would change her forever. She has since served perhaps 1,000 adults in Ignacio and Bayfield, helping them toward their GED’s or fostering their work and academic potential. In 2004, Jackie was recognized by Colorado’s adult-education professionals as Teacher of the Year.

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Natalie Howard, Homeschool Coordinator PRCLC

BS, Pre-Medicine – Ft. Lewis College
MA, Educational Leadership/Principalship – University of Northern Greeley
Title 1 Teacher licensure
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Natalie was born in Ignacio, Colorado, and raised among lake adventures, piano lessons, and soccer games, eventually going on to Durango’s Ft. Lewis College to obtain a Pre-Med degree. Working in and around Durango, especially with children, she developed a zeal for education and promptly returned to the “Fort” for her school-teacher licensure. The career that emerged was beyond expectation: wholehearted, community-focused, and (to her young students’ delight) almost hyperactive in its engagement of learning, particularly amid the outdoors. Renowned at PRCLC for her popular classroom events, projects, and field trips, she’s now a mom twice over, adding to her extended family. “I like being around people and I can be either entertaining or annoying depending on the audience. I love teaching and I love life!”

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Deborah Pace, Adult Education Instructor PRCLC

BA, Physical Education – University of New Mexico
Minors in Psychology and Biology
MA, Community Counseling -- Adams State College
LPC licensure
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Growing up in New Mexico, Deb developed an early love of physical education—and the stamina to go with it. Married and raising children in Colorado, and attending graduate school, she began working in the juvenile justice system and later in an alternative high school to help youth improve their options academically and civically.

As Deb says, a person’s journey through life is bound to meet with detours and roadblocks—the choices are never easy, but education is the one thing that can empower and restore us to a positive direction. It gives hope, fulfills dreams: her ambition is to help others realize it in the face of whatever challenges life may bring them.

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Luri Owen, ESOL Coordinator PRCLC

MA, English – University of North Texas
BA, English and German – University of North Texas
USAF licensure: Academic Instructor School
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Luri’s diverse and worldly background is partly what motivates her enthusiasm for people and their different cultures of origin. An avid scholar now pursuing her Ph.D. through the University of New Mexico (in addition to her full-time attention to PRCLC instruction), she has long advocated for the importance of integrating social and cultural experience into the learning process. Fluent in French, German, Spanish, and an expert in English literature and humanities, Luri draws on a wealth of professional understanding and experience with international students—from her days as an Academy instructor with the U.S. Air Force, to her teaching at universities, to coaching families in the arts of American conversation. Besides her leadership as PRCLC’s Bayfield GED Coordinator for several years, her civic and journalistic labors (most notably for El Valle, our local bilingual newspaper) reach well into the larger community, building bridges and extending dialogue among our residents and businesses for the wellbeing of all.

"'Faith isn't just loyalty to tradition,’" Luri is fond of saying, using a quote from Peter Manseau, “’but a readiness to become something new.’”

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Mike Kirsch, Adult Education Instructor PRCLC

BA, Interdisciplinary Studies—Fort Lewis College
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As an instructor for the Pine River Valley High School, Mike taught the customary basics of Math and Science, as well as advanced electives in Art and Leadership Skills. The challenge was, however, the students themselves: young men and women left behind or unwanted by the standard educational system, facing incredible personal difficulties, accustomed to failure. Helping them overcome the doubts and fears, and earn success, became the basis of his expertise. “I learn from my teaching,” Mike says, smiling at the paradox. His long professional background in business management and business-training programs provides the ability to identify needs quickly and develop direct solutions, especially useful to PRCLC students. At the same time, his skills in technology and cyberspace afford the creativity and flexibility so crucial to 21st-century learning.

In addition to his avid family duties, Mike is currently finishing his Master’s degree in Curriculum Instruction and Assessment.

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Cecilia Robbins, Student Service Coordinator PRCLC

Graduate, Leadership La Plata
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Cecilia has lived in Ignacio, Colorado, all her life: a Velasquez descendant, her grandchildren now bringing in the Fifth generation. As at home with the local community, its people, its kids, its landscapes, rivers, fishing and camping as one can be, her kitchen remains the family center—and there is always something cooking.

She began as a GED student decades ago. Newly divorced, with two small children to care for, few options and an uncertain future, Cecilia found in the PRCLC classroom both peers and teachers who would become lifelong allies and, ultimately, co-workers. Carefully advancing through each test successfully, she says, “I felt a rebirth not only in myself but in beginning a brighter future.” Her hope was contagious, and she soon found herself in a career at PRCLC to help bring the chance to others.

Today Cecilia serves her community in multiple ways—the Regional Housing Alliance Board, Advisory Committee for the Ignacio Bike Week Rally, Ignacio Town Council, and currently Mayor-Pro-Tem. Yet it is her abiding passion for the GED students, the ones who “need a leg up” and whose struggle she knows all too well, that captures her spirit. “They need a cheering section—though some might see their task as small, we know how huge it actually is.”

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Scott Baker, Program Administrator

MA, English—Stanford University
BA, Literature and Writing—University of California, San Diego Minor in Classical Studies
AA, English—Mesa College
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Scott Baker is a lifelong Westerner, from a family line going back to Daniel Boone and ardently forward to the wilderness. While pursuing his doctorate in the cultures of the American West at Stanford University, he began volunteering as a tutor at a local library—and from it found the seed of a new career in adult education. After teaching in colleges and universities for almost two decades, mainly in writing and the humanities, Scott launched into educating those he felt most in need, those seeking the “second chance” at success. As coordinator of the Corrections Education program at SUDC, and later Program Administrator at PRCLC, he’s been particularly interested in the ways that cultural backgrounds influence people’s learning, in customizing GED and college curricula for Native Americans, and in Family Support programs (he’s the dad of two adorable girls). In 2007 Scott was awarded the state adult-education professionals’ Teacher of the Year. He’s also served with various state and regional boards to advance literacy and opportunity for rural adults and their families.

“For me, teaching is still a bit like gardening,” Scott says. “The weather may wilt a crop but you have to be an eternal optimist.”