Mountain Park Environmental Center

meet our Staff

Linda Loraine – Environmental Educator
Linda joined MPEC staff as a part-time environmental educator with the Nature: The Natural High program in April, 2003, and became a full-time staff member in June, 2004. Linda hails from South Centeral Kansas, moving to Colorado in 1995. Never outgrowing a need to play in the mud, she has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics. Her vocational experiences include music, mental health administration, and leading guided horse pack trips in this Sangre de Cristo mountains.

Contact Linda: naturegal@fone.net

Michelle Potts – Development Director
Michelle's family instilled in her a love of being outside, from Colorado skiing at age 3, to watching birds in western Nebraska, to tobogganing in Wisconsin. As of February 2006, she feeds her love of the earth by planning and managing MPEC's fund development. She has a Juris Doctorate from the University of Denver's College of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She toiled for over 4 years at a nationally recognized Chicago law firm, served as a law clerk on the Iowa Supreme Court, pounded nails as an apprentice carpenter to an environmentally sustainable builder in Beulah, and created lattes as barista in her Beulah coffeehouse. She and her husband Mark attempt to live sustainably in Beulah.

Contact Michelle: michellempec@fone.net

Jeff Thompson – Environmental Educator
From the smallest alpine flower to the largest canyons, Jeff Thompson acquires his love and inspirations for life. Jeff has trained college students to collect field data on public lands, been a camp counselor for elementary school children, led college based mountaineering trips, volunteered in a first grade classroom, taught people to ski and snowboard, and has monitored plants, animals, and ecosystems for the State of Colorado. He has degrees in Outdoor Leadership, Land Management, and Conservation Ecology. Jeff began applying his devotion to nature at the MPEC in the fall of 2005.

Contact Jeff: rangerjeff@fone.net

Dave Van Manen – Director
Dave Van Manen has been working in the field of education, with both children and adults, for over twenty-five years. Dave is founder and director of the Mountain Park Environmental Center. Dave's background includes being a nationally known children's musician, performer, and recording artist, with a specialty in environmental music and storytelling.

He has fifteen years experience as a clinical music therapist, and is a well-known workshop and in-service facilitator, presenting a multitude of topics for audiences including educators, health care professionals, and parent organizations. Dave has been a resident of the town of Beulah for 30 years, where he and his wife Helene raised their two children. He is the author of Plants of Pueblo Mountain Park, a field guide to the flora of mid-elevation sites of Colorado's southeastern mountains. Dave is an avid hiker and can often be found hiking the trails of Pueblo Mountain Park and surrounding areas.

Contact Dave: mpec@fone.net