Instructor Biographies

Grand Canyon Field Institute is proud of its outstanding team of instructors. Made up of resource experts possessing PhD's, Masters and Bachelors degrees, our instructors continually share their passion for Grand Canyon with others. The following is a list of instructors that will likely be leading classes during the upcoming season.

If the class description lists the instructor as “Field Institute staff,” one of the following instructors will serve in that capacity. Preclass materials will indicate which instructor has been scheduled for your class, or you can call the Field Institute office for the latest information on specific assignments. All instructors listed, with the exception of Mike Buchheit, Jack Pennington and Elaine Maier, are acting as independent contractors while leading courses and performing duties for the Field Institute. Mike, Jack, and Elaine are full-time employees of the Grand Canyon Field Institute.

Listed alphabetically by last name.
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Stewart W. Lasseter

Stewart W. Lasseter has been teaching and exploring in the Southwest and afar for more than 25 years. He came to Arizona for studies in Geosciences and Languages at The University of Arizona and stayed to explore the Southwest’s rich natural and archaeological history. He expanded his explorations throughout the Americas fascinated by all forms of self-impelled travel: rafting and kayaking in California, Wyoming, West Virginia and Patagonia, cycling treks in Europe, South America, and the Great West, and backpacking in mountains from Maine to Washington to Tierra del Fuego. Today you’ll find him facilitating adventure philanthropy projects and adventure-based educational programs in the US, Mexico, Chile, and Central America and consulting on stress management and wellness for students, corporate clients, and indigenous peoples.

Bruce Aiken

For over 30 years, Bruce Aiken and his wife, Mary, have lived at Roaring Springs, the source of water for both the North and South Rims located along the North Kaibab Trail. There, in the canyon’s depths, they raised their three children. A renowned artist, Bruce’s paintings of Grand Canyon capture its varied landscapes and mesmerizing beauty with vivid colors, intimate details and a unique style that some art critics have labeled “authoritative realism.”

Stewart Aitchison

Stewart Aitchison is a zoologist and geologist by training and a naturalist of the American Southwest by passion. He has been exploring, photographing, teaching and writing about the Colorado Plateau for nearly 40 years, 10 of those as a field biologist for the Museum of Northern Arizona. Besides leading trips for the Grand Canyon Field Institute, Stewart also escorts educational excursions for National Audubon Society, Smithsonian, National Geographic Expeditions, Elderhostel and other educational groups across much of the globe. Stewart is an author and photographer whose latest books include Grand Canyon’s North Rim and Beyond, A Guide to Southern Utah’s Hole-in-the-Rock Trail and The Desert Islands of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. His photographs have appeared in Arizona Highways and National Geographic.

Mike Anderson

Mike Anderson has been researching, writing and teaching the history of the Grand Canyon region since 1990. He is the author of three canyon books: Living at the Edge: Explorers, Exploiters and Settlers of the Grand Canyon Region; Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park; and Along the Rim: A Guide to Grand Canyon’s South Rim from Hermits Rest to Desert View. Mike organized the canyon’s first history symposium in January 2002 and edited the resulting proceedings for publication by the Grand Canyon Association.

Bryan Bates

Bryan Bates has been exploring and leading wilderness trips in the mountains and canyons of the West for over 30 years. After completing a master’s degree in environmental science in 1978, he and a friend hiked for 21 days through the Grand Canyon. Since then he has been a river guide and researcher within Grand Canyon and the surrounding Colorado Plateau. Bryan is best known for his research on the astronomy of the ancient Southwest, in fact he discovered an ancient calendar site along one of the routes he hikes with Field Institute. Bryan teaches biology, environmental science and natural history at Coconino Community College, and he is the chair of the Oxford International Conference on Archaeoastronomy. He and his family live in Flagstaff, in a two-story solar hogan that he designed and built.

Gary Bolton

Gary Bolton fell in love with the Grand Canyon at a young age and considers the canyon his home. In the past 35 years, he has rowed more than 160 Grand Canyon river trips, guided river expeditions in 12 other countries, and led treks in the high Himalayas of Nepal, India, Pakistan and China. Gary received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology and botany, respectively, from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. in natural resources from the University of Arizona. He is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, but Gary’s favorite activity is sharing his love of the natural world and teaching natural sciences on long outdoor adventures.

Kim Buchheit

Kim is a creative professional who moved to Grand Canyon National Park in 1994 to serve as Grand Canyon Association’s first art director. Prior to that post she worked as an art director for a leading arts organization in Scottsdale, Arizona. She earned her degree in art and has taught both fine-art workshops and college-level courses in graphic design.

For the past decade Kim has grown her own design business and continues to work with the park service on a freelance basis, as well as with other clients across the country.

A long-time advocate of the arts, Kim was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Washington, D.C. in 1993. She has served as a juror on several artist panels and sat on many art-related committees for organizations throughout the state, including the Artist-in-Residence Program at Grand Canyon National Park.

As a fine artist, Kim enjoys working in a variety of media. Her love of felt is rooted in an affection for its understated beauty, a fondness for the old-world craft of felt-making, and the simple earth- and animal-friendly nature of the materials used in the felting process.

Mike Buchheit

Mike Buchheit has been with the Grand Canyon Association (GCA) since 1995. He has served as the director of GCA's Grand Canyon Field Institute since 1997, and as a Major Gifts Advisor for GCA's philanthropy team since 2009. Mike is an author, landscape photographer, Leave No Trace master trainer and frequent lecturer on both Grand Canyon National Park and park-based education programs. A native midwesterner, he received a degree in journalism from the University of Iowa.

Bruce Corey

Bruce Corey brings a unique combination of skills to guiding outdoor adventures throughout the United States and around the globe. A Leave No Trace advocate, he is well traveled on the Colorado Plateau, having logged close to 100 backpacking trips at the Grand Canyon. Bruce has worked with business leaders, youth and a number of international clients and is known for his wisdom, sense of humor and ability to transform adventure into learning.

William deBuys

William deBuys’s seven books include A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American West (released by Oxford University Press in November 2011), River of Traps (a 1991 Pulitzer finalist), The Walk (an excerpt from which won a Pushcart Prize in 2008), and Salt Dreams (winner of a Western States Book Award in 1999). He was a 2008-2009 Guggenheim Fellow. His love of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau is reflected in an edited volume, Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell, which Island Press published in 2001. As a conservationist, he has helped protect more than 150,000 acres in New Mexico, Arizona, and North Carolina. From 2001 to 2005, he served as founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, which administers the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in north-central New Mexico. Recent writing projects have taken him as far afield as Borneo and Lao PDR, where in 2010 he participated in a wildlife expedition in search of one of the rarest large mammals on Earth, the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis). He lives and writes on a small farm in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico.

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Instructor Biographies