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Though his title is executive director, Jack Shea of the Teton Science School likes to say he's a scientist by training, teacher by choice and an administrator by mistake. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ASHLEY WILKERSON

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On any given morning, Jack Shea bustles among the students and parents dropping their kids off at Journeys School. He greets each child and parent by name and asks about their family or recent vacation.

Staff members walk by, and he asks about their projects, their students, or their weekend plans.

As executive director of the Teton Science Schools, Shea, 56, doesn’t have an office. The entire Jackson campus of the school serves as his home base, allowing him to appear to students and staff as though he is everywhere.

And in some ways, Shea is everywhere on the campus. In 20 years as executive director, he has been involved in every piece of the campus expansion, from curriculum development at Journeys School to the actual design of the Jackson campus, leaving his mark and philosophy on every piece of the school.

Shea grew up in the blue-collar town of Pittsfield, Mass., joining the family carpet business at 12.

No one in his family went to college, but his dad was fascinated with understanding how machines functioned.

“That’s really what science is, the desire to know how things work,” Shea said.

Shea’s grandfather taught him to fish, instilling his first appreciation of the outdoors. He dreamed of being a forest ranger.

When he could, Shea escaped town, finding mountains to explore.

“Basically, in my town I was weird,” he said.

Learning the ways of the outdoors alone and unguided, Shea tested his limits, making his share of near-fatal mistakes.

But in the mountains of western Massachusetts, he learned to take initiative and go his own way. He learned to make crucial decisions in stressful situations and gained an understanding for consequences, he said.

“It was good training to be a leader.”

Shea attended college at the University of Vermont, where he earned a degree in wildlife biology. His mother took a second job as a dental assistant to help pay for school, and in the summers Shea came back and worked in the carpet business.

Shea then headed to West Africa with the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps would become one of his greatest learning experiences and also one of his greatest failures.

The teaching methods didn’t work. Red tape and antiquated systems strangled chances for growth.

“I decided if I ever got involved in something like that again, I would do it better,” he said.

After three months he quit. It still bothers him he didn’t finish his two years.

“The takeaway,” he said, “is, you can fail in life despite having the best intentions.”

From the heat of West Africa, Shea traveled to the tundra of Alaska for graduate school, studying caribou. He spent weeks alone in the middle of nowhere, working on his master’s in animal behavior.

Summers he traveled back to New England and took a job as a janitor at The Audubon Society. Shortly after he started the person in charge of the teen program quit.

The director looked to Shea, who said he could run the program.

But can you still do the cleaning as well? the director asked.

Shea agreed.

Shea liked the challenge teaching offered.

He wanted to provide for the kids the adventure experience he had exploring on his own, but with the guide and mentor he never had.

“It was set up much more natural history and I changed it to a natural history experience,” he said. “It raised some eyebrows.”

He taught backpacking, canoeing and outdoor survival skills.

“Nature is that great interface of outdoor activity and science,” he said.

Greg Ward of Massachusetts was 14 the first summer Shea took over the program. He went on overnight bike trips and learned to rock climb.

Shea’s adventures were unique at the time. It shaped the way he viewed the outdoors.

“Our environment is a beautiful and a fragile place that can truly be enjoyed,” he said.

Ward and his brother Don came back for several summers.

Today, Ward, 48, goes backpacking and mountain biking with his daughters. One of his girls even attended a program at Teton Science Schools, the next generation benefiting from Shea’s programs, Ward said.

Of Shea’s first group of students, he has kept in contact with many, including Ward and his brother.

Kids came back summer after summer, and many eventually went into conservation work or outdoor education. His first students evolved into friends and eventually coworkers.

Shea has been a teacher ever since. He has worked at schools teaching biology, alternative energy and ecology while starting and running alternative recreation programs featuring hiking, climbing and biking. He started a business leading adventures for all ages around the world, from Africa to Alaska to Europe.

And then in 1988, as the fires roared through Yellowstone National Park, Shea came to Jackson originally to be assistant director of Teton Science School,  as it was then called, but ended up at the helm when the director left the job at the same time. 

Spend any time with Shea and he’ll probably share his motto with you.

“I am a scientist by training, teacher by choice and administrator by mistake.”

Shea wasn’t trained to run a $9 million organization.

“I’m a caribou biologist,” he said.

The work as an administrator took him away from teaching. But he always finds “teachable moments” all the time for students and staff, said Jen Levy, a former graduate student at the school, now executive director of the Association of Nature Center Administrators.

“One thing about Jack, despite how busy he is, he makes himself available,” she said.

Levy went into the graduate program in 1994 wanting to be an educator. She came out an administrator after seeing how Shea drove the vision of the school. He was frank in sharing the school’s struggles and how decisions were made.

“That to me, was the best education,” she said.

Teton Science Schools’ mission since the organization’s inception in 1967 has been the same.

“Take education and outdoor recreation and mix it with a strong dose of science,” Shea said.

But in Shea’s 20 years, the school has grown in size and scope of services. Compared to six full-time employees, there are now 80 on two campuses. More than 15,000 people a year from all over the country come to the school for half-day wildlife tours to week-long training.

The growth has not been without its controversy and its struggles.

The creation of Journeys School is one of Shea’s proudest accomplishments and also one of his most personal. His daughter, Hayden, is enrolled. The school’s students go on “journeys” from Yellowstone to Costa Rica as part of their curriculum.

“It’s a school that doesn’t really sit still much,” Shea said, dodging high school students practicing outside with telescopes without tripping on smaller kids walking by in a line. Enrollment this year was a record 192 students. Capacity is 220.

It was about offering a different choice in Jackson, he said.

There are still misconceptions about the school, including it isn’t a real school because of its name. But graduates have gone on to colleges and universities, also heading up campus groups on sustainability and alternative energy, passing on the messages they learned at the science school.

“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Shea said.

“In some ways I care what the community thinks,” Shea said. “In some ways I don’t.”

When the Teton Science School campus expanded, Shea found himself and the school in the middle of public scrutiny and with the opposition coming from an unexpected place.

Some environmentalists, including the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, disagreed on the proposed campus location just below West Gros Ventre Butte, saying it would disrupt wildlife.

Alliance members said they supported the school’s mission but thought building the school would disrupt the habitat.

It was “strange” to be on the opposite side of the public battle from environmentalists, Shea said. But he stood by the proposed location, maintaining the green-built campus was better for the area than other development and that studies showed the location was not a major migration corridor.

The Teton County Planning Commission would endorse the development, and Teton County commissioners eventually approved the project in 2003. Of the school’s 900 acres, all but 17 were dedicated as a conservation easement, limiting development to less than 2 percent of the land.

Shea calls the fight a “polite battle” and said the school’s relationship with the alliance has healed and the two organizations have strong ties. With approval, construction began.

The campus redefined green building standards, during a time when “green” wasn’t yet a catchword. Shea sold the project with inspiration from his NASCAR fan father, calling it a high-performance design.

The expansion of Teton Science Schools has brought growing pains. Staff retention is the biggest issue for the organization, Shea said. The schools offer rental housing, but to attract and keep good staff, in the future, Shea plans to offer affordable housing people can build equity with, he said.

Journeys School also is dealing with a common issue private schools across the nation face. The school has 36 percent of its student on financial aid, but the middle class is missing from the equation. It’s hard to compete with the local public schools that are free and offer a good education, he said. Competing against higher salaries in Teton County School District also is hard and something Shea said he and the school must address.

But despite the struggles, the mission of the Science Schools is more important now than ever, Shea said. Many kids have no connection to nature, he said, And if they don’t grow up valuing the natural world, they won’t take care of it.

“Jackson Hole is a big treatment center for nature deficit disorder,” he said.

When things get tough financially, or administratively, Shea turns to a cache of letters from people who write about their experiences.

One boy bought a Teton Science Schools T-shirt during his stay. A year and a half later, he died from an illness. His parents wrote saying the boy wore the shirt during his last days because he had such good memories from the school.

“Educators can have that effect, yet we have to do more and more,” he said. “We can never stop. We have to keep going.”

And that is Shea’s plan, to keep working at the school as long as his body holds up, all the while increasing the science schools’ role as a national and international resource.

And then? Well, Shea still hates he didn’t finish Peace Corps. He might go back.