School Board Members

Nancy Stubbs, President, District A

Nancy Stubbs, representative of District A, was elected to the 9-R school board in 2013. She moved to Durango with her husband, Bill and two cats in 2009.

Nancy is a recently retired educator (elementary classroom teacher, Reading Specialist, Language Arts Coordinator, and Director of Curriculum and Assessment), and International Consultant, who lived, worked, and raised a family in the USA (California and Arizona); and various countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America.

Nancy grew up in San Diego, CA. She obtained her BA in Social Sciences and Education from San Diego State University, her MA in Curriculum and Instruction from Michigan State University, and her Ph.D. in Instructional Technology and Design from the University of Southern California. She holds California and Colorado Teaching licenses.

As curriculum director in international schools she has designed, implemented, and provided professional development for programs and curricula that cover the American style of Standards and Expected Learning Outcomes including the Common Core Standards. She has trained and applied the PYP, MYP, and IB programs from Europe, and the Chinese and Vietnamese educational requirements for graduation. She also designed online learning programs and courses for a private company, an international network of universities, and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Nancy has been married to Bill for, shall we say, a long time. Bill is also a retired international educator. They raised two children, Marisa (Italian born) and William (Iranian born) overseas. Nancy and Bill’s grandson, Steve, fell in love with Durango and chose to go to school here and now lives and works full time in Durango.

Nancy has found contentment in settling down in such a beautiful setting with family, cats and dogs. Being on the school board enables her to be able to continue to give to students after retirement -- the last piece of the puzzle to being happy in life.

Stephanie Moran, Vice President, District B

Stephanie Moran, representative of District B, was appointed to the Board on February 28, 2012. She was elected to the Board in November 2013 and again in November 2015.

Ms. Moran has been an adult educator and GED Program Manager at the Durango Adult Education Center for fifteen years and was an adjunct instructor for Southwest Colorado Community College from 2001--2013. She served as Secretary of the Colorado Adult Education Professional Association (CAEPA) for six years and earned the Teacher of the Year award by CAEPA and the Colorado Department of Education in 2004.

She is married to Dr. Andrew Gulliford, who teaches in the History Department and Environmental Studies program at Ft. Lewis College. Their two children are graduates of Escalante Middle School and Durango High School.

With an M.A. in English from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and undergraduate degrees in English and Elementary Education from the University of Northern Colorado, Ms. Moran has taught at six colleges and universities, ten years at Middle Tennessee State University. She designed curriculum for a bridge program that transitions GED and high school graduates into college successfully, an adult career pathways course, a course in study skills, and college courses in theme-based instruction.

She loves Colorado, hiking the red rocks with her husband and their dogs Finn and Josie, sharing books, poetry, and ideas with students and friends, and doing her small part to keep Durango and the Four Corners a great place to live.

Mick Souder, Member, District C

Mick Souder served on the Durango 9-R School Board from 2013 to 2015, and was re-elected in November, 2017. Following his first board term, he was on the district's Finance Advisory Committee.

Mick is a Senior Consulting Technical Solution Manager for IBM, and has a diverse background in education having taught for 11 years, mainly on the Zuni Indian Reservation in Western New Mexico. At the end of his teaching career, he coordinated development of a pioneering online education program for The College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota and helped Capella University get accredited. He also was a state-wide Internet Curriculum Specialist for K-12 school districts in Minnesota.

He has been an advocate of using communication technology to empower people to affect their societies for the past 30 years. This has included helping start not-for-profit Internet services (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network River Project), training (Access Minnesota Main Street e-commerce project), teaching elementary school students to produce community radio (Zuni Public Schools), community access television (camera operator, board member and President for Durango Community Access Television) and helping write a book on applying the principles of e-commerce to state and local government. Mick was involved with the global civic engagement organization, E-Democracy.org, since its inception in 1994 and served on its Board of Directors until 2015. He has also served on the Durango Nature Studies Board of Directors.

Mick holds a Master's degree in technical communication focused on computer-mediated communications. He is a successful grant writer and has managed costing, budget creation, and technology design on projects. He and his wife Linda Schwinghammer have lived in Durango since 1999. Both of his children, Lisa Schwinghammer and Gabrielle Souder, are graduates of the Durango 9-R School District. Linda was a 9-R teacher and is currently directing the testing center at San Juan College. Lisa is a teacher in the Denver Public Schools. The family talks about education a lot.

Joe Kusar, Treasurer, District D

Joe Kusar was appointed to the Board of Education on September 5, 2017. Joe joins the board and brings extensive knowledge Senior Vice President of Commercial Banking for Bank of Colorado’s Durango, Colorado Region. Mr. Kusar’s focus is on providing financial solutions and delivering credit, depository, treasury, investment and related banking services to small growth businesses, commercial businesses and professional service firms in the Durango community.

Mr. Kusar has been active in the Banking industry since 1997. Prior to joining Bank of Colorado in 2010, Mr. Kusar served as a Senior Vice President of Commercial and Middle Market Banking for Royal Bank of Canada Financial Group’s U.S. Banking Operation and Vice President of Commercial and Private Banking for SunTrust Banks, Inc. Throughout his career he has worked with growth companies in the business, commercial and middle market space. He also worked in the SunTrust Private Bank with an emphasis in physician group banking. Mr. Kusar is a graduate of Western State College of Colorado with a degree in Business Administration and a graduate of Georgia State University with a Master’s degree in Business Administration.

Shere Byrd, Secretary, District E

Dr. Shere (Kuss) Byrd is a second generation Durangoan who spent her K-12 years in School District 9-R. She attended Western State College in Gunnison, CO on a cross-country ski scholarship, and after attending graduate school at the University of Oregon and doing postdoctoral research at Washington State University, she had the opportunity to come home to Durango as a faculty member in the Biology department at Fort Lewis College, where she has taught cell and molecular biology for 25 years.

While at Fort Lewis she has advocated for greater use of high impact pedagogies that focus on student-centered learning and problem solving in the classroom. She introduced undergraduate research with faculty mentors into the biology curriculum and it is now being used as a model across the entire campus. Dr. Byrd has hosted local teachers, and high school and community college students in her lab, enabling them to do hands-on research. She was recognized with the Alice Admire Teaching award in 2008 for her commitment to engaging students in her classrooms.

Dr. Byrd has also supported enhanced student learning opportunities by writing several successful multi-million dollar Department of Education grants. These grants provided increased opportunities for underrepresented students, such as new digital media equipment for students producing the Native American newsletter, and funding for Farm to Table interns at the Environmental Center. She is an active faculty partner of the Village Aid Project student organization, and has traveled to Ecuador and Myanmar with these students to help villages in these countries build water and sanitation projects. For her continued involvement she has received the Fort Lewis College Achievement Award and was recently named the Roger Peters Distinguished Professor.

Dr. Byrd and her husband John have one daughter, Mallory, who recently graduated from Durango High School, and has numerous nieces and nephews attending different 9-R schools. Shere is also on the Board of San Juan Basin Public Health, and was recently elected as Vice President of the Durango Cooperative, a partnership between Mancos and Durango School Districts. The Byrd family are all outdoor enthusiasts, involved in hiking, scrambling peaks, biking, rafting, and all the other activities Durango has to offer.