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Greetings!
From the Editors:
We hope this season's news from the ACMHE and its members
finds you well, and breathing in the fair winds of spring. We're sending it from our new office, still
in Northampton, MA, where we're discovering some new shoots,
and look forward to finding out just what was under the frozen turf when we
moved in last December. Our new address
is listed below.
We're also looking forward to a year of expanded efforts to
bring contemplative practice wider and deeper into campus life. The ACMHE intends to increase visibility and
membership this year and we will be enlisting your help. Please help us by completing the member survey to help us refine our benefits,
and consider forwarding ACMHE event announcements to colleagues when you
receive them to help generate interest and recruit new members.
When Arthur Zajonc welcomed participants to last year's
Summer Session, he spoke with a sense of urgency about making use of all
available resources as we address the pressing issues of our time.
"Education has developed techniques over thousands of years
to develop the exterior abilities of the student; we come together this week to
give care and intention to the development of the interior. A contemplatively oriented "complementary
curriculum" can offer great benefits, and has practical applications in many
fields. We deprive ourselves of half the
resources available when our solutions to problems fail to plumb our own depths
of insight and concern."
--Arthur Zajonc
That sense of urgency intensifies in light of the news that
Arthur has recently been diagnosed with stage one Parkinson's. He is meeting
the challenge with extraordinary grace and courage, and making use of a wide
spectrum of resources in response to the illness, including contemplation (see
article below on "Meditation and Mortality").
This issue also includes a full report from that Summer
Session (and an invitation to apply to the 6th Annual Session this August); two
wonderful submissions from 2008 Contemplative Practice Fellow David Kahane; an
interview with new member Pamela Russell; and an array of announcements from
members which are worthy of your attention. Please consider making a
contribution of your own to a future newsletter--we are always delighted to hear
from you.
With warm regards,
Beth Wadham
Geri DeLuca
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We've Moved!
The
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and The Association for Contemplative
Mind in Higher Education have moved to
15 Conz Street, Suite 1
Northampton,
MA 01060
Phone, fax and email contact remains
unchanged.
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In This Issue
Meditation and Mortality: Practice and Parkinson's by Arthur Zajonc
Meditation at Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
Interview with Pamela Russell, Coordinator of College
Programs, Mead Art Museum by Beth Wadham
Mindfulness and Presence in Teaching and Learning by David Kahane
Screenings on Campus of The Buddha, A Film by David Grubin
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Welcomes New
Board Members
Announcements from Members
Poem: Becoming Conscious by
Mary Rose O'Reilley
Reports: 5th
Annual Summer Session on Contemplative Curriculum Development &
Retreat for Academics, November 2009
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 Meditation and Mortality:
Practice and
Parkinson's
by Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics, Amherst
College and Director, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
The diagnosis came a few months ago; I had stage one
Parkinson's disease. The most prominent symptom was a persistent resting tremor
in my right hand. I had been meditating for many years, and now I was
experiencing firsthand the ways in which meditation and a chronic medical
condition can intersect.
I started my meditation practice in my usual way with the
cultivation of humility, reverence, and calm. I slowly opened and closed my
unsettled hand in synchrony with my shallow breathing. The tremor in my right
hand gradually slowed as my meditation deepened and my awareness widened. The
movements of my body associated with Parkinson's became smaller and ultimately
stopped. The jitters that accompany me during the day had finally ceased, and I
found a place of rest and ease. I welcomed the silent spacious calm. It seemed
as if a whole day's agitation slid from my body.
Then, taking up a line of poetry as the focus for a
concentration practice, I noted that my hand began to tremor (is this the verb?
Or tremble?) once again. Returning to spacious awareness, the tremor
disappeared. I have noted the difference consistently over recent weeks.
Concentration practices stimulate the tremor whereas a practice of deep,
silent, open awareness calms it.
Meditation is not something apart from life, but firmly
anchored in it. If we are ill, stressed, or distraught, meditation will meet
each of these and we learn the ways in which practice and life can shape each
other. In my case, open-awareness meditation has not only stilled the tremor in
my hand for a short time, but it has helped me to carry the prognosis and
changes in my life. Each day is more valued than the one before, each meeting
with a friend is heightened and intensified. It has become clear to me that meditation
and mortality are well-acquainted with one another, and that the profound calm
at the heart of meditation is also courage before the challenges of life.
Published on February 5, 2010
at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-meditative-life/201002/meditation-and-mortality-practice-and-parkinsons
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Meditation Sessions at Mead Art Museum of Amherst College
The Mead
Art Museum is in the midst of a
series of four evening meditation sessions, free and open to the public, in the
museum's galleries at 7:30 p.m. on the Wednesday evenings of April 7 and May 5 (previous sessions took place on Feb. 17 and March 24). Designed to foster mindfulness and a deep engagement with a
selected work of art, the sessions will be guided by four members of the Amherst College community with experience in
mindfulness meditation and sustained, focused contemplation of visual art.
According to the series' organizer, Pamela Russell, recent
studies have demonstrated the importance of "prolonged looking" for gaining a
full appreciation of a work of art, and the sessions will offer an opportunity
for art lovers to take their interests in art to a new level of engagement by
doing so. Each one combines quiet meditation with time for shared responses
to the "attentive looking" exercises designed by the session facilitator, she
added.
Feb. 17: Arthur Zajonc, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of
Physics, with a focus on William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Le TravailInterrompu (Work Interrupted), 1891.
March 24: Daniel Barbezat, Professor of Economics, with a
focus on George Inness's Virginia Sunset, 1889.
April 7: Mark Hart, Amherst College Buddhist Adjunct Advisor,
with a focus on Randall Davey's Monhegan
Harbor, ca. 1915.
May 5: Haley Douds '10, with a focus on Thomas Cole's The
Past and The Present, 1838.
A complete schedule
of the museum's spring events is posted on the Mead's Web site: www.amherst.edu/museums/mead/programs.
For more information, please visit the museum's Web site, www.amherst.edu/museums/mead, or
call 413/542-2335.
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Interview with member Pamela Russell,
Coordinator of College Programs, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
by Beth Wadham
Beth: I was
really intrigued when I heard about the meditation sessions you're offering at
the Mead Art Museum. Joel Upton mentioned them when he came into
the office to give his "Visualizing Contemplation" Webinar last December. Where did the idea to do this come from? Was it the museum director, or faculty
members?
Pamela: I think...it
was me. The way I trace the arc, it begins with my peripheral interest in mindfulness
practice. Over the past10 years I've read some key books, attended sittings,
and I took a 3-part course at the Monadnock
Mindfulness Center
near my home base in Keene,
NH. So it was in my very positive awareness.
Then, when I came for my interview here in May, there was an
Amherst College magazine at the bed & breakfast
where I stayed. In it was an article by
Economics Professor Dan Barbezat about his "Consumption and the Pursuit of
Happiness" course, in which he uses some contemplative practices. It may also have referred to the "Eros and
Insight" first year seminar taught by Joel Upton and Arthur Zajonc. Well, when I read about what was going on at Amherst, I just
popped. I'd never really thought about
contemplative practice in a collegiate setting or being part of a course, and I
thought, I love this. I didn't know if I
was going to come to Amherst
at that moment, but fortunately, about three weeks later I found out I would
be. I didn't know who these people were
yet, but the idea began percolating at that time.
The other thread is that there's a movement in museum
education, which is my professional field, to slow down and look. There are many studies about what people
actually do in museums, suggesting what they could do, and what are appropriate
ways to engage visitors. An article in
the New York Times last summer, by
Michael Kimmelman, "At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus," gives
a sense of the current reality. Then,
there's Project Zero at Harvard, and their recent report on what happens in
museum study centers. It asks how people
quietly engage with works, what questions they ask, and what kind of guidance
they need.
In the study center, conditions are different than in the
hallways and galleries of the museum. It's all about focused looking and deep engagement. In the report, visitors describe the power of
objects to captivate their attention, surprise them, and invite wonder. There are rewards to this kind of prolonged
looking, when people take the time to see new things and form new ideas.
In the mix as well (for generating the idea for the
meditation sessions), in fact the real tipping point was the almost humorous
news about Mount Holyoke Art Museum's
spa night. They open the doors in the
evening and in the lobby are manicures, temporary henna treatments. There's massage and ongoing yoga in
galleries. I thought, well that could be
popular at Amherst. And then it just clicked. Mindfulness is even a bit less to do than
yoga-and more meaningful. Yoga uses the
galleries as a pleasant environment, but doesn't really engage with the works
of art.
Knowing there were people at Amherst, I thought there was potential. I reached out to Dan Barbezat and he
suggested I speak to Arthur and also Mark Hart, who has a standing Buddhist
meditation session on campus each week.
During a meeting of the three of us, there was enthusiasm and we decided
to send out a trial balloon with this series.
So that's the origin: my personal empathy with mindfulness,
knowing a goal in museums is to stop, slow down and look, and the built-in
expertise and interest in meditation at the college.
So far, there's been a positive response from students and
others. It's a new idea. There have been
meditation sessions in museums, but not focusing on the work of art. At the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum
they used the courtyard for a Buddhist sitting session.
Beth: It is a new
idea, but it seems like there is a wonderful concord with a mission of art
museums, as I experience them. When I
began going, as a child, I loved the hush and awe that invited feelings of
being in the presence of something different, and awakening, and responding to
it. They are contemplative spaces.
Pamela: What I
like to think about is the time it takes to create a work of art, versus the
couple of seconds it's usually looked at.
Beth: People
aren't used to attending so carefully to visual information. In a way you do see it all at once.
Pamela: But
there's a language. On a very simple
level, we teach docents a way to talk about color, line, shape. To take the
time to look at art only in terms of color, say, not the subject or content of
the work. Discuss whether it's a warm
palette or cool palette and ask what that does to the way we feel. Or break out a single feature, asking whether
it's rectilinear or diagonal, and what that contributes to meaning. I like to compare it to paying attention to
the meter of a poem.
And then, my favorite part is the discussions that
follow. People invariably see things they've
never seen, and that is so great. That's
what I hope these events will allow. My
husband was asking, "What is actually going to happen at these sessions?" I'm not really sure, but I'm sure we'll get
some surprises.
Beth: Do you have any experience with inviting this
kind of prolonged looking?
Pamela: When I
was at the Maryland institute of Art,
I taught "Art Matters" to freshmen.
Everyone who teaches it does something different. I saw models of what others had done, but I
was feeling my way, and I put up Picasso's "Woman before a Mirror," and said,
we're going to look at this quietly for 10 minutes. And it seemed like an eternity. Even for me.
And I'm thinking, why am I doing this?
I've made a grave mistake. But I
kept with it and they stuck with it. It
was challenging. For me, as a teacher it
was hard not to talk for that long. But
it set the tone, and we all became more comfortable with it.
Beth: It's kind
of like with a practice, when you begin, you become aware of all the chatter
and the difficulty of bringing yourself back again and again to your point of
awareness.
Pamela: I
remember when I first started with 20 minute meditations on my own, and then
planned to go to the center where they offered 90 minutes. I was apprehensive, even scared, but of
course found it's very possible and fine.
In my work with professors here, they usually come trying to
get illustrative material, or examples, of what they're teaching. If they're reading Baudelaire they want to
show a portrait. I would include that,
but move beyond by suggesting that they put out several images and have the
students compare them. For a Rilke
class, we bring out prints to discuss, even pretend they're poems, to see what
kind of message comes out.
It's so much more memorable for the students. Rather than
just being shown something, they make something of what they see. And ultimately it's more fun for the teacher,
too.
Select References
Joel Upton's "Visualizing
Contemplation" Webinar is archived at http://vimeo.com/9007209.
The article on Dan Barbezat's
"Consumption and Happiness" course is at https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/classroom/node/95882
An article on "Eros and
Insight" is available at http://www3.amherst.edu/magazine/issues/04spring/eros_insight/index.html
The final report for
"Learning in and from Museum Study Centers," the research collaboration between
Project Zero and Harvard
University, is at http://pzweb.harvard.edu/Research/HUAMPZStudyCenterLearning.pdf
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 Mindfulness and Presence in Teaching and Learning
by David Kahane, Associate Professor of Political
Science at the University of Alberta
I was miserably anxious starting out as a teacher. There was
an exhilaration in sitting or standing at the front of a classroom, but also
deep insecurity about my knowledge and competence. I teetered between a sense
of inadequacy and (when convinced that I'd given a seamless lecture or
facilitated a great discussion) the surging exhilaration of accomplishment.
I embodied, in other
words, a vacillation between senses of worthlessness and worth that constituted
my normative world as an undergraduate and graduate student. In this world,
education is a hierarchy: you begin as a fundamentally inadequate novice and
set about stacking up knowledge, skill, and accomplishment in order to deserve
the esteem of those who survey and evaluate your performance. And we can become
the harshest observers of our own performance, reading this harshness into the
reactions of our students, peers, and teachers.
My teaching, especially starting out, tended to be about
covering up what I didn't know, about coming across as accomplished, about
performing seamless knowledge in order to stave off the ever-present specter of
humiliation. I taught from a deep-seated sense of lack, and inadvertently
modeled for my students that they could overcome their own lack by learning to
perform expertise.
The alternative that I experience more often now is a
pedagogy of plenty. My anxiety as a teacher is not gone - this jittery pulse is
often with me in the classroom. But I am more able to work with it: to embrace
groundlessness and uncertainty as the heart of learning. Instead of modeling
academic (and teaching) mastery as an escape from lack, I hope that I invite
students to recognize that they are already good enough, that their learning
can be a way of more fully experiencing themselves and their fundamental
adequacy.
Content mastery is of course crucial to good teaching, which
requires knowledge of course material and is enhanced by scholarly depth. This article stresses presence and downplays
content mastery because the culture of the academy so often skews things in the
opposite direction. Each teacher needs to navigate this balance for themselves,
including in light of the risks and rewards of particular teaching contexts and
power relations.
During the decade I spent in the Department of Philosophy at
the University of
Alberta, I achieved some
success by introducing collaborative models of teaching, but when I began
mindfulness practices it helped me to clarify the meaning of "presence" in
teaching. I stumbled into a week-long retreat at the Zen
Monastery Practice
Center in California and started learning basic
mindfulness meditation. I connected deeply with this challenging practice of
staying with the present-moment experience of my breath, gently releasing the
thoughts and sensations and emotions that relentlessly drew me away. There was
a connection between this mindfulness practice and many of the things I had
been seeking in my teaching: an ability to be present to the nuances of the
classroom in each moment, a sense of fundamental adequacy rather than lack, an
open, non-judgmental curiosity about my own experience, and skilled ways of
supporting others in this kind of learning. In meditation, I found a rigorous
practice for cultivating presence.
I was so struck by the connection between my experience of
Zen and my aspirations in teaching that (in addition to taking up meditation
through daily practice and a rhythm of retreats) I looked for literatures and
communities that explored links between mindfulness, meditation, and teaching.
A number of Google searches later, I found the Center for the Contemplative
Mind in Society. I attended three of
their Summer Contemplative Curriculum Development sessions, sustained by the
values of this community and inspired by its diverse experiments in teaching.
These summer sessions gave me the confidence and skills to bring meditation
overtly into my own classrooms. Let me provide just a glimpse of the form that
this has taken.
I taught three iterations of a third-year course on "Obligation, Compassion, and Global Justice," where we studied texts from
ethics and political philosophy on obligations to strangers while also
undertaking contemplative inquiry into our relationship to our own and others'
suffering and how this shapes our motivation to help. Each class began with about eight minutes of
mindfulness or "shamatha" meditation: sitting straight in our chairs and
training ourselves to stay with our breath, compassionately noticing when our
minds got caught up in thoughts and gently coming back. This meditation had a
number of effects. First, it brought all of us into the room together: we could
calm down, drop the preoccupations we carried in, and focus on the
conversations to follow. Second, meditation honed our abilities to actually
notice our own experience: it laid the groundwork for articulating our own
experience as part of our subject matter. Third, it attached a rigor to how first
person experience entered the course: rather than simply rehashing habitual
stories of who we were, we could look and see in new ways. And fourth, it
showed how each of us had a plenitude of experience and knowledge relevant to
the course: while there were difficult materials and skills to learn over the
term, none of us was operating from a place of lack.
I am now piloting another contemplative course, Mindfulness,
Activism, and Citizenship for Democracy.
This course, too, stages a dialectic between "third person" texts (on
deliberative democracy and mindful social activism) and "first person" inquiry based on meditative and contemplative
practices. There also is a community service learning (CSL) component: each
student spends twenty hours working with a dialogue-convening or frontline
service organization as a counterpoint to classroom dialogues, contemplative
techniques, reading, and journal writing. A key role of these CSL placements is
to provide a context for students to explore their ability to remain present in
the face of complexity and difficulty, and to notice what shifts when they can
sustain this mindfulness.
Students are energized and inspired by these highly
participatory, contemplative courses. The methods and subject matters of the courses
speak to students' search for meaning in their lives and educations: they
explore themes that matter in an unusually deep way, and share this exploration
with fellow students in a context of calm and trust. I have learned several
things in teaching these courses. First, while students gain a lot through
regularly practicing meditation in class, my ability to model and embody
mindfulness and compassion is nearly as important. The classroom presence that
has preoccupied me through my teaching career is crucial. Second, my ability
and that of my students to cultivate presence are mutually reinforcing:
practicing as a class dramatically increases our individual capacities for
mindfulness. Third, meditation encourages acceptance of whatever thoughts, emotions,
and mental states arise: we notice them and return to the breath. This
meditative orientation provides a grounded basis for dealing with strong
emotions and energies that arise for each of us in the classroom, including my
own anxiety as a teacher. Rather than experiencing this as debilitating, a
meditative orientation allows me to recognize the powerful energies underlying
anxiety, and to channel these into my teaching.
As I have found new ways to bring mindfulness and presence
into my teaching, I have deepened my understanding and love for this vocation.
I have started to glimpse, with my students, how increasing our ease with not
knowing provides a foundation for our most authentic and joyful learning.
About the author
David Kahane (david.kahane@ualberta.ca,
www.davidkahane.com) holds the Vargo
Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His teaching awards include the
3M Fellowship (Canada's highest award for undergraduate teaching), the Alan
Blizzard Award (a yearly national prize for collaborative teaching projects),
and the University of Alberta's Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision,
Rutherford Award for Undergraduate Teaching, and Teaching Unit Award. His
research focuses on citizen participation, democratic deliberation, and social
change, and he is especially interested on how models of inclusive,
collaborative citizen action can inform what we do in university classrooms and
university governance.
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 Learning about
Obligation,
Compassion, and Global Justice: the Place of Contemplative Pedagogy
Excerpt from: Kahane, D. (2009) "Learning about Obligation,
Compassion, and Global Justice: the Place of Contemplative Pedagogy. "
From Internationalizing the Curriculum in Higher Education: New Directions
for Teaching and Learning, No. 118, Carolin
Kreber (Editor), ISBN: 978-0-470-53733-6. Paperback, 128 pages, July
2009, Jossey-Bass.
Caption: Contemplative
techniques like meditation can help students to go beyond a merely cognitive
understanding of their responsibilities as global citizens, and to find an authentic
motivation to serve.
There are many reasons to internationalize the higher
education curriculum: catering to more diverse instructor and student bodies or
equipping students to flourish in an increasingly globalized world, for
example. For many educators, though, a key reason for internationalization is
ethical: it helps students to examine their implicit and explicit beliefs about
whose wellbeing matters, and to develop a more globalized sense of responsibility
and citizenship. Doing this pedagogical and curricular work, though, raises a
set of questions about how those of us in the relatively privileged global
north draw boundaries around our concern for others, what motivates our
relative indifference to or dissociation from the suffering of distant
strangers, and how these dynamics can be challenged and changed. In this
chapter, I draw upon my experiences teaching a 300-level philosophy course on
"Obligation, Compassion, and Global Justice" to offer a rather unconventional
answer to these questions. I suggest that while learning more about global
inequalities, reflecting on moral principles, and getting a more vivid sense of
the life experiences and perspectives of people in different parts of the world
are important to a pedagogy of global citizenship, they are insufficient. A
pedagogy of global citizenship also requires that students be supported in
contemplative practice, bringing mindful attention to their own embodied
experiences of dissociation from their own and others' suffering.
I have taught Philosophy 368 at the University
of Alberta in western Canada
since 2006, to a class of 35-45 students, about half of them philosophy majors
and half from other disciplines.
The course is built around a cognitive and motivational
puzzle relating to
global citizenship and global justice. The puzzle begins
with a few facts:
1. Large numbers of our fellow humans live in abject poverty
(1.2 billion, by one recent estimate), go to bed hungry each night (an
estimated 800 million people), and die daily from poverty related causes
(perhaps 50,000 a day).
2. We could each prevent a portion of this suffering at
minimal cost: the sachet of oral rehydration salts that could save a child from fatal
diarrhea costs about fifty cents, and twenty cents buys a day's food rations
distributed by the World Food Program in Sudan.
3. Almost all of us who work or study at universities in the
global north spend a significant amount on luxuries we could easily forego.
Put these facts together, and a sobering set of choices and
trade-offs becomes visible: in drinking lattes rather than regular coffees, for
example, I am paying a premium over the course of a year that could instead be
used to save many human lives. When I look this equation in the eye, I come to
an inexorable conclusion: many aspects of my privilege come at an
unconscionable cost, and ought to be given up for the immeasurably greater good
that these resources could do for the world's neediest.
Keep reading....
For the course syllabus, see http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/phil368/2007-368-Syllabus.pdf
For the full article, see http://www.contemplativemind.org/programs/academic/Kahane-Kreber.pdf.
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 Screenings on Campus of The
Buddha, a film by David Grubin for PBS
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society is organizing
screenings of The Buddha through its
academic network to encourage discussion and scholarship on the impact of
Buddhist religion, practice and philosophy across disciplines. Screenings of the film along with panel discussions
and other events, will take place at Brown
University, City University of New
York, Rice University
and Georgetown University.
The documentary for PBS by award-winning filmmaker David
Grubin and narrated by Richard Gere, tells the story of the Buddha's life. It features the work of some of the world's
greatest artists, across two millennia, with depictions of the Buddha's life
rich in complexity and beauty. Insights
into the ancient narrative are provided by contemporary Buddhists, including
Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Screenings in academia present the film in a secular
context, where it can be appreciated as the story of an extraordinary man who
offered insights that contribute to the evolution of the human spirit,
available to all, not just those who practice Buddhism or meditation.
All are invited to
join the conversation and learn more about meditation, the history of Buddhism,
and how to incorporate the Buddha's teachings on compassion and mindfulness
into daily life. Visit the website at http://www.pbs.org/thebuddha/ and on
Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Buddha/204444522871.
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The Center for
Contemplative Mind in Society Welcomes New Board Members
The Center is pleased to announce four new members to its
Board of Directors: Daniel Barbezat,
Bradford Grant, Carolyn Jacobs and David Scott.
 Daniel Barbezat is
Professor of Economics at Amherst
College.
A member of the Amherst
faculty since 1988, Barbezat received B.A. degree in economics and philosophy
from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,
and the M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from the University
of Illinois at Champaign.
He is a 2008 Contemplative Practice Fellow and received
funding to develop the course, Buddhist Economics, Skillful Means in the
Marketplace, which examines the relationship between Buddhism and Economics to
engender a means to understand individual market interactions and their
connection to global economic issues.
 Bradford C. Grant is the
Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Sciences, and
the Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Howard University.
He is the former Chairperson and Endowed University Professor of Architecture
in the Department of Architecture at Hampton
University, Hampton, VA.
He received his Master's degree in Architecture with a focus on social and
cultural factors from the University
of California at Berkeley. A registered architect, Mr. Grant
has extensive experience in housing and community design through his research,
teaching and architecture practice as principal of the architecture firm AGWA
Architects, Hampton, VA. His research on cultural environmental
design practice can be found in his work titled "Accommodation, Resistance and
Appropriation in African American Building", in Craig Barton's Sites of
Memory (Princeton Press, 2000) and in the Directory of African American
Architects/Survey of African American Architects, co authored by Dennis
Mann).
 Dr. Carolyn Jacobs is the Dean and Elizabeth Marting
Treuhaft Professor of the Smith
College School
for Social Work.
She is also the Director of the Contemplative Clinical
Practice Advanced Certificate Program. She has taught primarily within the
research and practice sequences of the School. Her areas of professional
interest include religion and spirituality in social work practice and
organizational behavior. She has written and presented extensively on the topic
of spirituality in social work. In 2001 she was elected to the National
Academies of Practice as a distinguished social work practitioner.
Dr. Jacobs received her B.A. from Sacramento State University,
her M.S.W. from San Diego State University, her doctorate from the Heller
School of Brandeis University and her training as a spiritual director from the
Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.
 David K. Scott was Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
1993-2001.
David K. Scott was born
and lived as a boy on the northernmost of the Orkney Islands off the north
coast of Scotland--a small island 4 miles by 2 miles with a population of 100
people. This experience led to his early interest in nature and science, and to
the interconnectedness of matter, body, mind, soul and spirit. He worked as a
nuclear scientist for 20 years with interests in extreme states of matter, such
as existed in the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, and for the
last 20 years as an educator and University administrator. All these
experiences over 60 years have converged on his current interest in integrative
learning and action, and in the next stage of human consciousness evolution to
more integral and holistic approaches to knowledge and its application in the
world.
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Announcements from
Members
 Mirabai Bush at Vassar
College
From Eugenio Giusti,
Professor and Chair of Italian, Vassar
College
On February 24-25, 2010 Vassar College
was graced by the visit of Mirabai Bush as the keynote speaker for the
celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Carolyn Grant '36 Endowment
Fund. The fund offers Vassar's faculty
members the opportunity to integrate expressive arts
and experiential processes into their teaching and to explore pedagogical
methodologies that engage the imagination in a hands-on way. The "experiential
processes" include meditative arts, and the organizing committee made the
brilliant decision to invite Mirabai Bush to share her profound knowledge, and
wisdom about meditative and mindful practices with the Vassar community.
During her
two-day visit, a series of smaller meetings and an all-campus lecture took
place. The first meeting, held on
Wednesday afternoon, was open to faculty members who were new to and curious
about contemplative practices. About 15 to 20 faculty attended the meeting. The
conversation was lively and interesting, mostly centered on questions about
introducing mindful practices into the classroom, or reporting on results of
attempts already made, and the issues they raised. The evening lecture, "Beyond
Distraction," was very well attended both by faculty and students. At the
post-lecture dinner, celebrating the tenth anniversary, several attendees,
whose personal and pedagogical projects had been supported by the Fund, toasted
in honor of Carolyn Grant, who is now 95 years young.
The following
morning a beautiful snowfall welcomed a meditation guided by Mirabai. About
fifteen faculty, administration and staff members attended the meditation,
which was followed by a sharing of present and past experiences about the
meaning and feeling of practice. At lunchtime Mirabai met with a group of
college staff and administrators who are applying some of the practices to students'
life, or are themselves teachers of such practices. They all expressed a strong
desire to make these practices more available to any group in the community,
and even establish a regular weekly meditation time and location for anybody at
the college. As the snow continued to fall into the late afternoon, Mirabai met
with a few students for an open conversation. The sharing was vivid, honest,
and very rich. The students had
questions about their own practices, and the ways Mirabai would see them growing
into them. A warm hug ended the meeting and the day. Thank you, Mirabai for
your visit.
Consciousness Studies
at Evergreen State College
From Sarah Williams and Bill Arney, recipients of 2006
Contemplative Program Development Fellowship for "Sensing Sophia in
Illich's Vineyard: Developing Evergreen's Curriculum through Collegiality."
Various initiatives that were possible due to our 2006
Contemplative Program Development Fellowship have resulted in the establishment
of a Consciousness Studies Curricular Planning Unit at our institution, The
Evergreen State College. There is now a critical mass of scholars engaged
in contemplative education who, within Evergreen's alternative institutional
structures, have formed not a department but an interdisciplinary curricular
planning unit to support teaching and learning under the rubric of
"consciousness studies."
http://www.evergreen.edu/catalog/2010-11/consciousness.htm
 Integrating Reflection at Seattle
University
From Kellee Franklin, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty, Albers
School of Business & Economics, Seattle University
At the beginning of this year, six faculty members from
different academic disciplines at Seattle University (SU) embarked on a journey
to explore how reflective practices could be integrated into classroom
experiences. "The Heart of Higher Education: Inspiring
Meaning and Purpose through Reflective Practices" is one of three fellowships
offered this academic year with The Center for the Study of Justice in Society
at SU. The Center was established in 2001 to promote interdisciplinary faculty
scholarship on topics of social, economic, and environmental justice.
Dr. Kellee Franklin, an adjunct faculty member with the Albers
School of Business and Economics and the Institute of Public Service,
designed the fellowship and serves as the topic facilitator for the session on
reflection.
Franklin's
interest in reflective practices stems from her career as an organizational effectiveness
consultant and educator, during which she came to understand the value of
contemplation as a means to encourage individual and organization
transformation. In the aftermath of the
2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, where she was leading a client
engagement, she realized that her job was not just improving business
performance, but about providing people with a safe space to bring their full
selves to work-the joy and the pain. She found it incomprehensible to
ignore the devastating situation of 9-11. To help her clients transition through the tragic events of that day,
she adapted Jack Mezirow's work on transformative dimensions of adult learning ,
which emphasizes the use of reflection as a way to make meaning and facilitate
positive change, to promote healing in the workplace.
Now she teaches students at SU about the need for greater
empathy, compassion, civility, and awareness in their own lives and in their
future work environments. "In this age of technology, it became apparent to me
that students were missing out on real moments to reflect and find deeper
meaning in their learning experiences," Franklin
said. She also believes this trend is true of organizational leaders.
"Organizations are forced to move at a competitive pace which results in little
time and space to contemplate situations and their own actions. My hope is that
by teaching students in higher education the skill of reflection, we are
helping to form more mindful leaders and contributors to society."
Students at SU have gravitated to reflection. In a cohort
graduate program at SU where Franklin
served as a core faculty member from 2007 to 2009, the reflective learning
course was the only one that received requests to attend from students outside
the program. Although they were not
permitted, the requests sparked the idea of "Inner Wisdom: Reflective Practices
for Inspired Leadership," an informal gathering Kellee offered once a month. The experience with the small informal group
led Franklin to
design the fellowship program specifically for SU faculty to learn about
different ways to integrate reflection into the classroom experience.
Over two academic quarters, Kellee will lead the series with
the goal of identifying a variety of reflection techniques that could be used
in the classroom to promote deeper purpose and meaning, and increase awareness
about social justice issues. The group will examine the theoretical,
historical, and social perspectives of reflective practices in higher education
as well as explore existing methods of reflection being applied in various
schools at SU. Scholars and authors who recognize the significance of
inner-work for fostering positive social change will be invited to share their
thoughts with participants on the advantages of weaving reflective practices
into learning experiences for students. Throughout the series, participants
will be encouraged to engage in a variety of exercises as a means to fully
understand the learning intention, process, and outcomes of reflection. Participants
will discuss how different forms of reflection can be integrated across
academic disciplines to (a) support whole-person [mind, body, spirit] learning,
(b) help students with professional formation, and (c) equip students with
resources to cultivate a more 'just and humane world'. At the end of the
series, participants will present their core discoveries from the series and
ideas for using reflective practices in their field of study at an open forum
on May 14th at SU.
Kellee Franklin launched
her independent consulting practice, Organizational Effectiveness Consulting
(OE Consulting), in March 2008. Her practice focuses on organizational
transformation through creating community, increasing self-awareness, and
engaging individuals in the change effort. She served as adjunct faculty at George Mason
University and at the Institute of Public Service
at Seattle University.
 New Book from Member
Michele Lelwica, Associate Professor of Religion, Concordia College
The Religion of Thinness: Satisfying
the Spiritual Hungers behind Women's Obsession with Weight and Food (Gurze 2009) deals with the spiritual
dimensions of body image and eating problems. Mindfulness practice is one of the two
practical tools the book offers readers for developing a more peaceful
relationship with their bodies.
Forthcoming Book from
Sonya Huber, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Georgia
Southern University
The "Backwards" Research
Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration is available for pre-order from
Equinox Publications (London)
in the Frameworks for Writing Series. Growing out of years as a writer and
meditation practitioner, Sonya Huber's guide uses contemplative exercises to
help students rediscover their own curiosity by watching the workings of their
minds.
Forthcoming
book from Arthur Zajonc and Parker Palmer
The Heart of Higher
Education: A Call to Renewal
Transforming the Academy Through Collegial Conversations
By Parker J. Palmer
and Arthur Zajonc with Megan Scribner Foreword by Mark Nepo
projected publication mid-July,
2010
A call to advance integrative teaching and learning in
higher education.
From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to
Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College
and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in
Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher
education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to
teaching and learning that honors the whole human being-mind, heart, and
spirit-an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our
time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for
action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the
field of integrative education over the past few decades.
- Presents Parker Palmer's powerful response to
critics of holistic learning and Arthur Zajonc's elucidation of the
relationship between science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions
- Explores ways to take steps toward making
colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students,
faculty, and staff
- Offers a practical approach to fostering renewal
in higher education through collegiality and conversation
The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new
to the field of holistic education, all who want to deepen their understanding
of its challenges, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach
to teaching and learning on their campuses.
Endorsements for The Heart of Higher Education
Palmer and Zajonc have issued a compelling call for change
and renewal in higher education. They show us how colleges and universities can
be transformed by taking a more integrated approach to teaching and learning
that focuses on the inner lives of their students and faculty. -- Alexander and
Helen Astin, Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA
At a moment when many are dreaming of an integrative form of
higher education that unites intellectual rigor with compassion and love,
Palmer and Zajonc invite us to engage in conversations designed to infuse the
academy with meaning, purpose and soul. For those who yearn to transform
colleges and universities from sterile, vacuous spaces to places of hope,
possibility and respect for everything human, this is the book you have been
waiting for. -Laura I. Rendón, Professor of Higher Education, Iowa State University, and author of Sentipensante
Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation
Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc call for a renewal of our
commitment to inspiring deeper thinking and educating the whole person. This
book will and should inspire debate about our larger purpose, about how we can
go beyond the traditional silos in which we work for the sake of individual and
institutional transformation. -Anthony Marx, President, Amherst College
"What should be at the center of our teaching and our
students' learning?" Palmer and Zajonc take up this simple but daunting
question and provide the most solid ground yet on which to hold a conversation
about the heart of our enterprise. They re-imagine higher education in a way
commensurate with the magnitude of our problems and offer us practical paths
toward implementation. Integrative education is the most important re-formation
of the higher learning since rise of the modern university. This book can help
us achieve it. - Anthony Lising Antonio, Associate Professor of Education and
Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, Stanford
University
 Call for Help
From Isis Brook, Lecturer,Philosophy Section, International School of Community, Rights, and
Inclusion, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Hi, I am Isis Brook and as well as working at my usual
post as a Philosophy Lecturer I am currently completing an MA in Education. The topic of my dissertation could be of
interest to members, and I would be very pleased to receive any help or
guidance. My provisional title is "Can a 'Way of Being' be Assessed?" The
dissertation attempts to solve the problem (an increasing one in the UK context) of
courses which have an explicit aim of facilitating a student
developing/deepening/enriching etc. their way of being, having to either draw
back from that aim or state how it is assessed. My own contention is that
this should be an aspect of all higher education, but I am looking first
at areas where it is not a contentious part, such as counseling. The help
I need is in two areas: first, I can find very little written on this so if
anyone can point me to relevant literature, that would be helpful; second, if
anyone is currently struggling with the same problem or has discovered ways of
dealing with this I would greatly appreciate an email exchange. Many
thanks, Isis. hbrook@uclan.ac.uk
 Audio File of Contemplative Practice for Spanish Students
From Tori Smith, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Brown University
Here is an audio file of one of the practices.
It's a podcast I made available on iTunesU. My students in Intermediate Spanish really
enjoy being able to download them to be able to practice wherever they want.
They also get Spanish listening practice credit for this work, a double bonus!
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BECOMING CONSCIOUS
 by Mary Rose O'Reilley
Once I was the pool
owning today a sky
tonight a moon
cloud
heron
star.
Over eons I learned
water:
a bowl in the rock
liking it well
to fill
empty
and fill.
Mary Rose O'Reilley is the author of Half Wild, published by Louisiana State University Press, which won
the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy
of American Poets.
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