Staff Directory

In 2005 Jody Baldwin was placed at Dawson through Health South as an athletic trainer and was such a great fit for the community, and its athletic program, she was hired by the school a year later. A product of the State University system of New York, she earned her associates degree in liberal arts from SUNY Alfred in 1999 and B.S. in athletic training with a minor in exercise science from SUNY Cortland in 2002. The Bolivar, N.Y. native volunteers for the Colorado House Rabbit Society and enjoys music, sports, movies, running, baking and everything that the Colorado outdoors offers, including riding her motorcyle through the foothills. In 2012, she became the proud parent of an American Bulldog puppy named Cheymond.

Following a semester of teaching upper school Mandarin, Matt Carter accepted a full-time position at Dawson prior to the 2011-12 school year. From 1990-93 he was a teaching assistant on the CU-Boulder campus and the lead instructor of Beginning Chinese and assistant for each of Beginning Chinese 1 and Intermediate Chinese 1. While there he was also a research assistant on the Chinese Video Bank Project and interim computer specialist in CU’s Anderson Language Technology Center. From the Boulder campus he moved to the University of Washington and in 1996 and 1998-2001, he was a teaching assistant of Elementary Classical Chinese, and team-taught first and second-year Chinese. He also served as a substitute teacher for History of Chinese Literature. In addition to being fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he has reading proficiency in Classical Chinese, Japanese and German.

In 2009 Jean-Claude Hounou brought his personal mission, “Investing in future generations while service the individual today” to Dawson’s world language department.

Hounou was an ESL and French instructor at I.T.E.M, La Sirene and C.E.T.C High Schools and Technical Commercial Institute and Vocational School, all in Lome, Togo, from 1989-2003. Since moving to the United States he has been a coach/counselor for the Denver Rescue Mission and French instructor for Rite of Passage (Watkins), Alliance Francaise (Denver), MADALA (Parker) and Grace Chapel (Englewood). Hounou is multi-lingual in English, French and the local African dialects of Lingala (Congo), Mina (Togo/Benin) and Ewe (Togo/Benin/Ghana).

Bryna Cunningham was hired in 2007 from Denver’s Graland Country Day School where she spent the previous two years as a wellness teacher. She began her graduate school social work internships in 1993 at the Montgomery County (Md.) Department of Social Services and moved on the following year to the Foundation School of Prince Georges County. From 1996-98, Cunningham was a pediatric social worker at Georgetown University Hospital. She moved on to the education sector working as a Director of Counseling at the Maret School (Washington, DC) from 1999-2005. Cunningham’s classroom work began in 1987 at Ridgecrest Elementary School (Hyattsville, Md.). A year later she was an honors program section leader at her alma mater, the University of Maryland. While at the Maret School as their Director of Counseling, Cunningham pursued further training to further her expertise as a health and wellness teacher.

Peter Devlin assumed head lacrosse coach responsibilities in 2011 after being an assistant on the Dawson junior varsity staff in ’09 and varsity in ’10. He is also Dawson’s Middle and Upper School health teacher and assists with the school’s K-12 counseling support services.

Under his tutelage he has taken a team that finished 2-12 in 2010 to a 3-12 showing in 2011 and as a result was a Northern League Coach of the Year finalist. A year later the team played to a 7-7 mark. Prior to coaching at Dawson, Devlin was an assistant coach on the Colorado College staff during the 2000 and ’01 seasons.

During the offseason and summers, Devlin has coached hundreds of young players through numerous camps, clinics, and club teams, and continues to compete in various men’s leagues and tournaments.

Devlin attended Gettysburg (Pa.) College from 1997-99 where he was a two-sport athlete, as a starting strong safety on the football team and as a member of the nation’s the top-ranked Division III men’s lacrosse program that won the Centennial Conference Championships and reached the NCAA quarterfinals in both 1998 and ’99.

The summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college he attended the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Lander, Wyo., graduating from the Wind River Mountaineering Course before moving to Colorado in 1999.

Raised in one of the nation’s lacrosse hotbeds, Devlin began playing lacrosse in Westchester, N.Y. when he was 8-years old and continued his prep career at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, N.C. There was a first-team all-state player in lacrosse in 1994, ‘96 and ’97 and in football in 1995, ’96. On the gridiron he was a member of the 1994 NCISAA State Football Championship team that reach the title game a year later and semifinals in 1996.

Since moving to the Centennial State Devlin has played on the men’s club level for both the Boulder Lacrosse Club (2004-11) and Americans Lacrosse Club (2012).

Devlin transferred to CU-Boulder from Gettysburg and completed his undergraduate work in communication from there in 2003. He earned his M.Ed. in education and human resource studies with a counseling and career development specialization, school-counseling focus from Colorado State University in May 2011.

Stephen Fox brought 17 years of teaching in Waldorf schools, including a decade at Boulder’s Shining Mountain Waldorf School, to Dawson’s Lower School when he assumed the role of fourth grade homeroom teacher in 2007.

At Shining Mountain, he was a fourth through eighth-grade classroom teacher and woodworking teacher for grades 5-12, in addition to administrative responsibilities. From 1990-92, he was a seventh and eighth-grade teacher at the Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, N.H. He taught first-third, fifth, and sixth grade at the Sante Fe (N.M.) Waldorf School from 1985-90. Fox began his teaching career at the Austin (Texas) Waldorf School from 1982-85.

Brian Hannen began teaching Upper School math at Dawson in 2000 and is also the ninth grade class trip leader. He has been on the sidelines for Dawson soccer, basketball and volleyball games.

Prior to moving to Colorado, Hannen spent five years teaching at Trinity Collegiate School in Darlington, S.C., where he taught computers, physical education, and most math classes from Pre-algebra to A.P. Calculus. There he also coached boys’ and girls’ soccer, girls’ basketball, and helped run an adventure program.

When not in school, he can be found spending time in the outdoors climbing, hiking, biking or indoors playing strategy games or creating origami work.

After serving as the Dawson Summer Programs assistant in the summer of 2011, Sandra Havelka was promoted to direct and market the school’s 20-plus summer camp offerings, as well as its After School Academy. Prior to working at Dawson, she was the senior area manager for Skyhawks Sports Academy. In her Northern California territory, she had 35,000 campers ages 4-14 years old over a five-year span. The San Jose, Calif. native enjoys cooking, playing soccer, hiking, and riding her bike in her free time.

Stephanie Hempen joined Dawson in the fall of 2012. She is the co-founder of A Place 2 Play sports programs and soccer academy based in Louisville. She has coached on the youth level for Boulder Force and Trebol Soccer clubs and was an assistant coach on the Division I level at Duke, William and Mary and UC-Irvine. Prior to founding A Place 2 Play, she was the associate director of the Colorado Soccer Camps for eight years. She holds the U.S. Soccer Federation A coaching license and an NSCAA Advanced National coaching license. A competitive athlete herself, Hempen holds an American Kenpo Karate black belt and has been an instructor in that form of martial arts. She has also been a personal trainer since 2010.

Faye Johnson brought 35 years of teaching all levels of elementary education to Dawson’s third grade program in 1999.

Her career as an elementary school mentor began in 1968 as a fifth grade teacher in Commerce City, Colo., with stints in the same grade in Quincy, Mich., and Half Moon Bay, Calif. For the next two decades she was a specialty teacher and parent volunteer before returning to the classroom in 1994 as a third grade teacher and space specialist at Almaden Country Day School. She returned to the Centennial State in 1996 where she was the Lewis Palmer Charter Academy Teacher of the Year and a Talented and Gifted (TAG) program director and board member in Loveland before her hire at Dawson.

Johnson earned her B.S. in elementary education from the University of Illinois and masters from Lesley University. She holds both her Illinois Life Credential and Colorado License (K-8) certificate.

Two of her biggest passions, space and the Iditarod, are evident in her classroom. She was chosen as a national finalist for the Teacher on the Trail, Alaskan Iditarod and loves exposing students and their families to this great adventure and passion. She also enjoys teaching students about space and Colorado. Faye was a nominee for the Amgen Award for science teaching excellence.

Five years after teaching U.S., World, and European history at Dawson, John Kilgour returned in 2012 to teach U.S. History and Economics. Since 2007, he has served as a senior legislative assistant and legislative assistant in the office legislative legal services in the Colorado General Assembly in Denver, gaining first-hand experience and insight into the legislative process and state politics. Prior to his first stint at Dawson, Kilgour was a teaching assistant in the history department at the University of Montana.

Cindy Knight joined the Dawson community in 2006 as its middle and upper school librarian.

Previously she worked in both public and academic libraries in the states of Colorado, Arkansas and Louisiana. A native of Louisiana, she attended the prestigious Louisiana School for Math, Science, and Arts, received her B.A. in English from Louisiana College and her M.L.I.S. from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. 



Her hobbies include cooking, karaoke, piano, hockey, football, reading, and spending time outdoors. She also plays pool badly.

Chris Larson came to Boulder and Dawson, in 2012 after spending seven years as a first grade teacher in some of Massachusetts’ most highly competitive public school systems. He served in the north Boston suburbs of Lynnfield and Bedford teaching professional development technology courses, and was the district coordinator for academic and administrative technology for the Triton School District in Byfield, Mass.

In addition to his role an Upper School Spanish teacher and director of student activities at Dawson,
Arnold Lewis has been the varsity golf coach since 2001. In that time the boys’ golf team has won two regional titles, four league championships, and finished in the top four of the state tournament three straight seasons, twice taking third place.

He has coached Peter Hassan (’12) to the 3A state championship title in 2009, and Cole Nygren (’12) to a state championship runner up finish in 2011 and the Mile High League Champion and six-time season medalist Cam Connor and Mile High League Senior of the Year Carson Jones in 2012.

In 2010 Lewis was named the Boulder Daily Camera Regional Coach of the Year.

Lewis was also Dawson’s varsity baseball coach from 2003-07. He was named the Mile High League Coach of the Year in 2004 after taking a 2-11 team in 2003 to a 9-5 team in 2004.

Before coming to Dawson, he was the varsity girl’s golf coach at Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma, Wash. Lewis led that team to fourth and sixth place finishes in 1999 and 2000, respectively.

Cinnamon Lopez began her career at Dawson in 2006 as the school’s permanent substitute and her role on campus has since grown where she has taught seventh and tenth grade English, eighth grade public speaking, ninth grade study skills, upper school speech and debate assistant coach, and assistant director of the upper school theatrical productions.

Prior to teaching at Dawson, she was a graduate instructor and teaching assistant in the English Department at the University of Virginia. She was also a tutor in the Writing Center on the Charlottesville, Va., campus, a program associate in the Center for the Liberal Arts and a member of the summer orientation course enrollment staff in the College of Arts and Sciences there.

Outside of the classroom, Ms. Lopez has 20 years of singing experience, has performed, written and directed numerous plays and musicals. At UVA she advised, performed and directed a student-run Shakespearean acting troupe.

One of the longest-tenured faculty members on the Dawson campus, Nate Lord has been an Upper School English teacher since his hire in 1989. The following year he led his first Junior Leadership trip down the Colorado River from western Colorado to eastern Utah and in 1992 he started the canoe and kayak club with a passion for the sport and three aluminum boats.

Two-plus decades later Lord has an enviable fleet of canoes and kayaks that can compete in any water and on any freestyle, slalom, or down river course.

In this span the program has produced numerous junior Olympians, national team members and world championship competitors and has started its paddling development by reaching into the Middle School after school club.

While the list of paddlers to reach those ranks is long and illustrious, it all starts with Tom Wier (’98) who was the first Dawson athlete to make the United States Junior Wildwater Team and has been a junior or senior team member since his graduation from Dawson and was the top C-1 paddler on the team for 10 years and has been ranked in the top 10-15 for a decade.

In that same graduating class, Lane Errickson was a junior and senior team member and she’s now a teacher and coach.

In the last decade, Tom Gray (’04) was a junior wildwater team member, 2005 graduate Nic Borst is a U.S. team member and youth coach.

Tyler Hinton (’11) became the first Dawson paddler to earn spots on both the U.S. Junior and Senior Wildwater and Slalom Teams. His Olympic bid fell short in 2012.

Rising in the ranks are current juniors Will Coggan and Gabe Machado who have raced in the Junior World Wildwater Championships and Slalom World Championships. The tandem also finished third in the senior national championships as the youngest C-2 boat in 2012.

Since his hire in 2009, David Meissner’s roles at Dawson have included lower school Spanish and world cultures teacher, Dawson Global Adventures Director (Dawson’s summer student travel program launched in 2012), and Director of International Programs, which includes the upper school language immersion program.

He began teaching in 1992, when he taught intensive English to upper elementary students at the Colegio Calasancio English Language School in Santander, Spain. From 1999-2000 he was an outdoor educator for the Tucson Parks and Recreation Department. While working at WETA, Washington D.C.’s PBS affiliate, Meissner conceptualized, named and co-authored ColorinColorado.org, an award-winning bilingual website and served as a production assistant for the PBS documentary A Tale of Two Schools. While working on the latter, he developed working relationships with major children’s book publishers and his stint as a freelance writer began, authoring 20 books science and social studies topic books for K-6 students. In doing so he received the 2005 Highlights for Children Photo-Essay of the Year award for the non-fiction article, “High in the Mountains of Ecuador”. Following his master’s degree, taught fifth grade in New York at P.S. 38, The Pacific School, in Brooklyn until his hire at Dawson.

While many hands work together to maintain Dawson’s 107-acre campus, the landscape is the pride of Tom Nangle, who has been Dawson’s groundskeeper since 1995.

Nangle came to Dawson from Phoenix where he owned and operated Jade Lawn Care for 12 years. While there he was also president of the Phoenix Bonsai Society. Since moving to Colorado he still maintains Bonsai. He is also a beekeeper and served as vice president of the Boulder County Beekeepers Association in 2007.

When Nangle isn’t tending to Dawson’s grounds, he’s tending weekly to adult learners in helping them pass their United States Citizenship and Immigration Service examination for American Citizenship through the St. Vrain Valley School District. For his dedication to this and other diverse projects, Nangle was named the Outstanding School Volunteer in the individual category in 2007.

Dwight Ovelman was the first art teacher in the Dawson Lower School and his role has matriculated into the upper school teaching photography and visual arts. He is the current department chair and Arts Center director.

Prior to teaching at Dawson, Ovelman taught private art lessons for four years in his native Pennsylvania. He moved to Colorado in 1995 and was a substitute in the Boulder Valley School District and K-5 art teacher at BVSD’s Douglass Elementary School until his hire at Dawson.

He continues to pursue his career as an artist and painter in his personal studio. Growing up on a working farm in Unityville, Pa., his art influence was his best friend’s father, David Armstrong. His hobbies include playing soccer, adult-league hockey, cycling and backpacking, and he has co-led the senior class backpacking trip since 2002.

An experienced CPA, senior accountant and tax technician, accounting manager, treasurer and accounting manager, Wendy Rose brings a diverse background into the business office, where she assists with accounts payable processing and recording, handling of cash receipts, and general human resources paperwork.

She came to Dawson from Boulder Door & Millwork and also works for the Starbucks Corporation.

Dr. David Slater came to Dawson from Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School where he taught English 9, American Lit and electives since 2005. He also served as an assistant varsity girls’ basketball coach and boys’ dorm house advisor. From 1998-2005, he was a teaching assistant and graduate instructor in the University of Minnesota’s English and art history departments. He earned both his M.A. in art history and his Ph.D. in English from Minnesota. Outside the classroom, Slater has been a Young Authors Day Camp Director, Wilderness Expedition Co-Leader and tutor at his alma mater, Wayne State University.

Sue Sundstrom claims to have the best job at Dawson, teaching engaged, curious and excited 5 and 6-year olds in kindergarten here since 1999.

Her Montessori-based kindergarten style stems from her time at Boulder’s Jarrow Montessori School, where she taught pre-k and kindergarten and was a field supervisor for interns from 1986-99. Her career in the classroom actually began as a high school and elementary school art teacher at Unity High School in Champaign, Ill. Tollgate Elementary School in Aurora (Colo.), respectively. In between her two art positions, she was a graphic artist for Jeppeson Aviation in Denver and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Solomon Islands.

In the Peace Corps she developed educational materials and traveled for sixth months to a variety of islands to help the locals understand basic health and well-being concepts as well as how to prevent malaria and dysentery. While in Nepal, she trekked 140 miles from Katmandu to the Tibetan border, staying with local village residents in the Himalayas.

She was a member of the American Montessori Society and National Reading Association and most recently has served on the curriculum, professional development and mini-grant committees at Dawson. She has traveled extensively in Australia, Southeast Asia, southern Europe and England. She enjoys hiking, golfing, watercolor and mural painting, jewelry making, gardening and playing with her two chocolate labs.

Dodie Udall has been supporting Dawson’s advancement efforts since her hire in 2004. She came to the Lafayette campus after eight years in independent school classrooms.

Her teaching career began in 1975 with Outward Bound where she was an instructor and course director in both the Gore, Collegiate, and San Juans mountain ranges of Colorado and Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah. From 1980-83, she taught high school social studies and served as a dorm parent at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School before teaching the same subject at Denver’s Graland Country Day School.

She took a 10-year hiatus from education when she worked for Hydrosphere Data Products until her hire at Dawson.

The Colorado transplant is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys gardening, hiking, reading, backcountry skiing, backpacking, and travel. She volunteers weekly at the Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA) food bank.