Kara Buckley

Kara Buckley, a full-time resident of Crested Butte, has spent three decades in education, as a high school teacher, a graduate lecturer, a college professor and a department chair.

Buckley is the founder and director of the Crested Butte Institute, which engages in academic research in three Western Slope policy areas: energy, land use and water.

The first recipient of the Endowed Chair in History at Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Mass., Buckley was also chair of the History & Social Sciences Department. She was an assistant professor in Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont, where her teaching and research focused on American politics and policy. During her doctoral years, she taught and guided curriculum at Stanford and at Harvard. She has earned numerous awards for her excellence in teaching and for her writing.

Buckley has a Ph.D. and master’s degree in Political Science from Stanford and graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors from Brown University with a bachelor’s in International Relations.