Uncovering the Heart of Higher Education

Friday, February 23

Saturday, February 24

Sunday, February 25

Sessions Details

Keynote
Thursday, February 22, 2007, 7 – 8:30 pm

The Precision of Poetry & the Passion of Science: An Education in Paradox
Parker Palmer, Writer, Speaker, Activist
Education today is filled with broken paradoxes, and with their lifeless results. We separate head from heart, resulting in minds that cannot feel and hearts that cannot think. We separate facts from feelings, resulting in bloodless data that render the world remote and untutored emotions that reduce truth to how one feels today. We separate theory from practice, resulting in theories that fail to inform our lives and actions that are driven by impulse rather than insight. We separate teaching from learning, resulting in teachers who speak but do not listen and students who listen but do not speak. The great challenge of integrative education is to “think the world together,” not apart, so that education can become the life-giving enterprise it was meant to be.

Keynote
Friday, February 23, 2007, 8:45 – 10 am

In Over Our Heads? The Hidden Curriculum of Adult Life
Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development, Harvard University
Until very recently we have tended to join our conceptions of mental development to our conceptions of physical development: i.e., at twenty you were as tall as you were ever going to be, and your basic mental equipment was also thought to be fully “laid in” by this time, as well. Further “wisdom” and “capability” was seen as the result of experience not qualitative advances in the basic mental equipment. After all, the “hard” scientists told us there was no qualitative brain growth after the first twenty years. Meanwhile, a group of “soft” scientists, working with longitudinal samples over the last 30 years, felt they were seeing qualitative increases in the complexity of mental systems for many adults. And lo and behold, at the end of this century, with better technologies available to them, the brain scientists recanted a fundamental article of their faith. In this plenary address, Harvard professor and adult development theorist Robert Kegan shares a lifetime of research into the continuing stages of mental development after adolescence and assesses the fit between the mental demands of our adult roles and our still-developing mental capacities.

Concurrent Sessions
Friday, February 23, 10:45 – Noon

• Teaching and Research in Contemplative Studies: Priorities for the Development of a New Field
  Contemplative Studies is an emerging academic field dedicated to studying consciousness and its potential through a comprehensive methodology that combines the objective and subject to give perspectives in a multidisciplinary approach embracing science (especially cognitive neuroscience), the humanities (especially philosophy, literature, and religious studies), and the creative arts. This session will discuss the teaching of contemplative studies in higher education and the prospects for developing new and synergistic research in this field.

  Session Facilitator: Harold Roth, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, and Director of Contemplative Studies, Brown University

• Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Gateway to Interior Domains of Learning and Teaching
  The jazz tradition boasts a long legacy of artists who have been involved in meditation and related practices to complement their creative excursions. Jazz’s improvisatory core—requiring the capacity to be fully present, integrate extraordinary technical expertise with freedom and flow, and listen deeply to fellow artists—is at the heart of this connection. The BFA in Jazz and Contemplative Studies curriculum at the University of Michigan and the UM Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies have been inspired by these ideas. This session will consider the underlying principles, obstacles, and opportunities associated with these initiatives.

  Session Facilitator: Ed Sarath, Professor of Music and Director of Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies, University of Michigan.

  to top

• Student Panel on Integrative Learning and Compassionate Action
  "That sounds great in theory. What does it look like in practice?" The discussion of the heart of education must include a deep concern with the lived realities of students. In this session, a facilitator will elicit perspectives and narratives from students regarding their experiences with integrative learning at various colleges and universities and the connections with their capacity for compassionate action in the world. Key prompts for the discussion will include: To what extent have they and other students succeeded in making a coherent and meaningful whole out of their education and taking it into the world (in publications, internships, community practica, advocacy research. etc.)? What factors in the educational experience supported or hindered them in making these important connections among disparate contexts, sites, disciplines and frameworks? How have the theories and knowledge constructed fromthe classroom and scholarly literature translated into practice? How has the process generated insights, helped to clarify values or otherwise transformed the student as a person and scholar-advocate? What points of learning or questions should educators and administrators focus on as they attempt to establish orrefine their own attempts at integrative and relevant education?

  Session Facilitator: Matthew Bronson, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Director of Academic Assessment, California Institute of Integral Studies; Paneliests: Various Students

• Education in an Integrative Age
  Discoveries in natural sciences and psychology, combined with knowledge of the world's spiritual traditions, are revealing an underlying unity in contrast to the fragmentation that has characterized epistemology since the time of the Western Enlightenment. These discoveries imply deep relations between our inner and outer experiences, between consciousness and the universe and between ethics and action. It suggests that we may be able to overcome the fragmentation that has characterized epistemology for hundreds of years, leading to an integrative world view that may be as transformative as the revolution ushered in with the birth of modern science. The session will explore these developments and their implications for learning and action. Experiences with contemplative practice in the classroom as a means of enhancing this emerging integral cosmology will also be explored.

  Session Facilitators: Susan Awbrey, Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education, Oakland University; Phyllis Fierro Robinson, Continuing Education Instructor, Maui Community College; David Scott, Former Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

  to top

• Connecting Heads, Hands & Hearts: Developing Intercultural Competence in a College Community
  Richland College, whose students and employees come from 131 countries, developed an Intercultural Competence Program (ICP) to create a climate where all cultures are valued. The ICP, a comprehensive professional development series, attempts to increase all employees’ intercultural competence. Based on the Bennett Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, the ICP attempts to move employees from one stage of intercultural competence to another through knowledge acquisition, skills development, and broadened world views. This session begins with an overview of the ICP series and a credit course based on the model, and moves into an intercultural experience followed by dialogue and reflection.

  Session Facilitators: Scott Branks del Lano, Professor and Director of the Richland College Institute for Peace, Richland College; Sue Jones, Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of Richland College Mind-Body Healthy Study Institute, Richland College; Lee Paez, Professor of Cultural Studies, Richland College

• Sustained Dialogue: It’s Not Just Talk…It’s a Social Movement
  In 1999, students began using a unique process called sustained dialogue to proactively improve race relations on college campuses. A network of sustained dialogue practitioners has since formed, connecting students at over a dozen colleges, universities, and high schools. The Sustained Dialogue Campus Network represents a budding social movement of passionate students, deeply engaged in changing the dynamics of their communities. Come learn the theory behind sustained dialogue, and how students create a safe space to address divisive issues, like race relations, that are often taboo in social settings. In this space, participants learn from one another and are changed by the experiences they share so that they can begin to truly understand the problems that face their communities and what power they have, as a group of individuals, to address them.

  Session Facilitators: Tessa Garcia, Program Director, Sustained Dialogue Campus Network; Christina Kelleher, Program Director, Sustained Dialogue Campus Network

  to top

• The Role of Experiential Practices in Cognitive Learning: Their Relevance to Cross-Cultural Understanding
  When experiential practices are used in education, they are typically used to illustrate a theoretical perspective; theory comes first, and shapes the experience. By contrast, methodological investigations of experience can be used as the matrix within which theory is generated. In this second approach, the learning can more easily take account of the many differences among students that shape their experiences, giving them voice, engendering respect.

  Session Facilitators: Hiroyuki Eto, Professor of English, Nagano College of Nursing, Japan; Don Hanlon Johnson, Professor of Somatics, California Institute of Integral Studies; Arisika Razak, Professor Women’s Spirituality, Program Director and Professor of Integral Health Studies, and Certified Nurse-Midwife, California Institute of Integral Studies

• Contemplative Disciplines in the Turbulent Currents of Rapid Change Business
  Building from experience in teaching a seminar, Spirituality for Organizational Leadership, to managers and senior executives, the speaker will discuss patterns of prayer and contemplative practice adopted by organizational leaders. How do leaders see spiritual disciplines as central to their calling? How do they maintain spiritual practices in face of travel and hectic schedules? What are the fruits of their discipline manifested in strategic decision making? How do they begin to approach inner freedom and an integrated life?

  Session Facilitator: André Delbecq, McCarthy University Professor, Santa Clara University

  to top

• A Unique and Integrative Way to Engage Students in the World: SEAL-E
  SEAL-E (Student Education Association-4-Leadership—Exponential) is a unique experiment underway at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Michigan. This integrative classroom without walls is local, national, and international in an effort to engage students academically, emotionally, and experientially. Founded by sociology professor Steve Severin and hosted in his home, students bring potluck dinners as they enter into conversation with leading practitioners in varied fields; including emotional intelligence, Native American culture, student violence, spiritual traditions, and physical movement that promotes cognitive development in children. On site visits, students have toured border schools in Mexico, met with the president of Ford Motor Company, and worked with Archbishop Tutu at a PeaceJam event. Severin, a Kellogg Fellow, helps students integrate life-changing insights into deeper understandings of self, global thinking, diversity, leadership, and community building. This holistic and penetrating pedagogy helps students explore their inner and outer journeys.

  Session Facilitators: Steve Severin, Instructor, Kellogg Community College

• Mentoring Critically Aware Spirituality and Commitment to the Common Good
  Why do college graduates so often fail to practice critical thought in today’s complex world? What happens when “the hidden curriculum of adult life” meets religious conviction? In a time of dramatic change, how do we mentor the next generations for the re-imagination of the common good? Building on three decades of research, teaching, and consulting in higher and professional education, this session will explore perspectives integrating cognitive, affective, moral, and spiritual development and compelling implications for the vocation and practice of higher education.

  Session Facilitator: Sharon Daloz Parks, Director, Leadership for the New Commons, Whidbey Institute

  to top

Keynote
Friday, February 23, 2 – 3:15 pm

Transcending Hatred, Engaging One’s Enemy Through Dialogue: Unlocking the Human Spirit
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Professor of Psychology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
The unfolding story of the 21st century is a pursuit for vengeance through ruthless murder and bloody massacres, violent wars conducted with weapons of mass destruction, peace deals between former enemies collapsing into cycles of bloody conflict. This is a precarious time. Current events have forced us to focus our attention on the fundamental dilemma that is beginning to shape our world: the dilemma of moral leadership. In this presentation I will discuss some of the factors that contribute to the problem of hatred and vengeance, and explore the values of compassion, empathy and forgiveness and their importance in transforming relationships from hateful engagement to forgiveness.

Concurrent Sessions
Friday, February 23, 3:45 – 5:15 pm

• School Shootings, the Amish, and Education: What Kinds of Environments Develop Kindness and a Willingness to Forgive?
  
  Two school shootings in the fall of 2006 focused national attention, not on the shooters, but on the response of the victims' families and communities. The Amish shootings in Pennsylvania and Emily Keyes' death in Colorado, both illustrated a counter-cultural response that leads to the question: what can educators learn from these tragedies? The session features an opinion editorial, a paper by an expert on Amish practices of education, a clip from NBC-Dateline, and a dialogue with the audience.

  Session Facilitators: Thomas J. Meyers, Associate Academic Dean and Director of International Education, Goshen College; and Shirley H. Showalter, Vice President-Programs, The Fetzer Institute

• Integrative Learning: Opportunities to Connect
  One of the great challenges in higher education is to foster students’ abilities to integrate their learning across contexts and over time. Learning that helps develop integrative capacities builds habits of mind that prepare students to make informed judgments in the conduct of personal, professional, and civic life, and is, we believe, at the very heart of liberal education. Building on the experience of the Integrative Learning Project, a collaboration between Carnegie, AAC&U, and ten partner campuses, participants will engage in discussion of what happens to curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and faculty development, when designed with integrative learning in mind.

  Session Facilitators: Pat Hutchings, Vice President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Mary Taylor Huber, Senor Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Cultivating the Heart of the Healer: A Clinical Model of Transformative Education
  The Institute for Health and Healing at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has established a unique model of education aimed at aligning the inner life of the student with their outer life of professional service. Through an experiential learning model, the curriculum facilitates exploring and expanding personal and professional behaviors and perspectives through an "action and reflection" approach. In an interdisciplinary training program that includes chaplains, nurses, art/imagery practitioners, psychotherapists and body workers, the therapeutic encounter is examined in depth through peer and supervisory feedback. The session will be interactive with a brief overview, experiential practices, and questions to generate discussion.

  Session Facilitator: Leslie Davenport, Institute for Health and Healing, Pacific Medical Center; Jeff Draisin, Physician, Institute for Health and Healing, Pacific Medical Center

  to top

• Eros and Insight: Uncovering the Relationship between Love and Knowledge
  On the basis of evidence from surveys and conferences, a significant community of teachers exists at all levels of higher education, from community colleges to research universities, who are using a wide range of contemplative practices as part of their classroom pedagogy. In addition to well-developed pedagogical and curricular methods that school critical reasoning, critical reading and writing, and quantitative analysis, this presentation argues that we also require a pedagogy that attends to the development of reflective, contemplative, affective, and ethical capacities in our students. The significance of these is at least as great as the development of critical capacities in students. The rationale for the inclusion of contemplative modalities will be articulated within this context. On the basis of considerable experience in teaching at Amherst College, I present an ‘‘epistemology of love,’’ which emphasizes a form of inquiry that supports close engagement and leads to student transformation and insight. This approach to knowing is implemented in the Amherst College first-year course, Eros and Insight. It includes a specific sequence of contemplative exercises that are practiced by students and integrated with more conventional course content drawn from the arts and sciences. Our experience shows that students deeply appreciate the shift from conventional coursework to a more experiential, transformative, and reflective pedagogy.

  Session Facilitator: Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics, Amherst College

to top

• Talking Across Boundaries:
  Institutional Encouragement of Interdisciplinarity
  A workshop/discussion on how to develop interdisciplinary collaborations within institutional structures that often accentuate divisions. The session will include discussion of obstacles and examples of how they have been overcome. Then the audience will be invited to share other experiences in breaking down disciplinary barriers.

  Session Facilitator: Douglas Kibbee, Professor of French Linguistics, University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana

• Global Dignity: Rethinking the Purpose of Higher Education
  The state of our world is remarkable by almost any measure. Religion, philosophy, politics, economics, nutrition, environment, human rights – are all topics that divide us. There are certain questions that clearly deserve the attention of higher education in such a climate; namely, ‘How can we prepare our nation’s students to address these issues? And how can we find a common language of values that will cross the cultural divides?’ While there is no doubt of the importance of practical education in bringing practical solutions to problems of technology, the evolution and transformation of the root values that are foundational to the issues that stand in the way of persons being able to live a life of dignity must receive our primary attention. If the proper end of liberal education is the advancement of the dignity of persons throughout the world, should this ‘end’ not be recognized and powerfully acknowledged throughout our programs, our curricula, our research, and our wider interaction with colleagues throughout the world?

  Session Facilitator: G. David Pollick, President, Birmingham Southern College

• Living Authentically
  The struggle to live authentically, with integrity and wholeness, is a challenge in our busy world. In the frantic clamor that cascades around us, with our attention pulled in several directions at once, we risk losing the courage to be wholly who we are. For more than five years, the Center for Formation in the Community College (now the Center for Formation in Higher Education) has been inviting those in higher education to the formation work of Parker J. Palmer. In this session we'll share the scope of our work to prepare formation facilitators in colleges across the nation and offer you an experience of slowing down to reconnect with the deep, authentic call of your own life.

  Session Facilitators:Session Facilitators: Ann Faulkner, Sue Jones, Elaine Sullivan, Co-directors of the Center for Formation in Higher Education

  to top

• Learning as Leadership: Old Lessons, New Paradigms, and The Ever-Present Need for Wisdom in Higher Education
  As higher education grows more and more diverse both in curricula and students, is there too much pressure to narrowly focus on vocational goals? Shouldn’t our aims be as broad as the increasingly globalized perspective of the twenty-first century? With globalization comes integration, both of academic and co-curricular experiences and intellectual and civic priorities. This session will be focused on theoretical and programmatic approaches to a creative whole-student philosophy in higher education, especially on grounding the university experience in various aspects of intellectual, civic, and ethical leadership, and particularly on the cultivation of wisdom as a legitimate goal of learning.

  Session Facilitators: Manuel Gómez, Chair of the UC Vice Chancellors Council, University of California, Irvine; Robin Harders, Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, University of California, Irvine

• Loving and Forgiving College Campuses
  Can the spirit of love and forgiveness help college campuses? Join us to learn how various communities are organizing grassroots efforts to apply love and forgiveness to their area's most challenging issues. The session will feature clips from The Mystery of Love and The Power of Forgiveness and provide an opportunity to become familiar with community conversations associated with the Campaign for Love & Forgiveness. These four conversations explore experiences and expressions of love as well as the potential power of love to transform our personal lives, our professional lives and our communities.

  Session Facilitator: Mickey Olivanti, Program Officer, Fetzer Institute

• The Role of Higher Education in Developing a Democratic Culture
  What is the role of universities and colleges in developing the habits of mind and heart that animate healthy democracies? How can universities and colleges develop programs and projects that engage students, faculty and staff in ways that promote democratic values and practices, advance the ideas and commitments of the universal declaration for human rights, and promote the principles of sustainable and equitable economic and social development? An emerging network of institutions in Europe, the United States, Asia, Africa, and Latin America is committed to this work, and invites broader participation from all colleges and universities.

  Session Facilitator: Brian Murphy, President, DeAnza Community College

  to top

Special Event
Friday, February 23, 8:00 – 9:30 pm

Eth-Noh-Tec : “Takashi’s Dream”
"Takashi's Dream" is based on the inspiring life of Takashi Tanemori, atom bomb survivor from Hiroshima. This journey piece on forgiveness begins with the prophetic and mythological-like dream of Takashi at age 8 while asleep in the bomb shelter the night before America dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. The approximately 35 min. piece follows his life journey from Japan to America, from childhood to his adult life rife with bitterness, confusion, pain and sorrow. Not until he is jolted into remembering his dream forty years later, does the miracle of that experience change his life from bitterness and revenge to one of forgiveness and reconciliation. Eth-Noh-Tec weaves movement, poetic voices and music to recreate a dream-like, haunted landscape that became Takashi's life as a victim and eventually victor over the many perils that followed his life as a survivor.

Keynote
Saturday, February 24, 8:45 – 10:15 am

Assessing and Nurturing the Spiritual Life of College Students and Faculty

Alexander Astin, Allan M. Cartter Professor Emeritus, University of California – Los Angeles and Helen Astin, Psychologist, Professor Emeritus and Senor Scholar, University of California – Los Angeles
The speakers will share their most recent findings from an ongoing National Study of Spirituality in Higher Education. Among questions to be addressed will be:

• How do students view themselves in terms of spirituality and related qualities such as compassion, equanimity, ethic of caring, and ecumenical worldview?
• In which kinds of spiritual/religious practices (rituals, prayer, meditation, service to others, etc.) are students most/least engaged?
• What role do faculty believe spirituality/spiritual development should play in undergraduate education?
• To what extent do faculty engage their students in activities (e.g., reflective learning, journaling, community service) that can promote inner development?

Concurrent Sessions
Saturday, February 24, 10:45 – Noon

• Establishing a Contemplative Program in the University
  In the last decade meditation and other contemplative practices have become more widely accepted. An increasing number of students and faculty are exploring contemplative practices and a contemplative approach to work, life, and study. Some colleges and professional schools are beginning to bring contemplative practice into the classroom. This session will review innovations to date and focus on the ways that a university could develop the components of a contemplative program. Such an approach could attract a significant group of applicants. It could also have significant impact of atmosphere of the institution and the quality of life of all students, faculty and administrators. The session will touch on issues of diversity, religious preference, and the practical issues of managing the interface between the contemplative part of an academic program and the more traditional parts.

  Session Facilitator: Charles Halpern, Chairman, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

• Embodied Exercises to Deepen the Classroom Experience: Silence, Breath and Cheerful Ears
  By bringing simple disciplines that integrate our body-mind to our classrooms, we support the possibility for the many layers of our being human to connect. Learning to enter silence though the four postures of mindfulness, giving time to feel our breath, and opening our ears without bias to the world can be used in any combination during some or all of our classes.

  Session Facilitator: Barbara Dilley, Professor, Naropa University

  to top

• Integrating Spirituality in the Classroom, College, and International Educational Coalitions
  This session will explore how the spiritual dimension of contact and experience anchors teaching and learning in higher education, particularly in community colleges. The facilitators will open the discussion with their experiences in the classroom and learning centers, as well as in networking with international educational partners. They will then invite participants to draw on their experiences in considering what a college spiritual initiative might look like as well as what synergies are possible by connecting classroom, college, and intra-college programs. The session will also include discussion of effective institutional strategies that lead to successful collaborations in designing and implementing spiritual initiatives.

  Session Facilitators: Paul Elsner, Chancellor Emeritus, Maricopa Community College; Naomi Story, Chancellor’s Special Assistant on Strategic Initiatives, Mesa Community College; Elisabeth Ursic, Professor, Mesa Community College

• Sentipensante Pedagogy: A Sensing/Thinking Approach to Teaching and Learning
  This session will feature findings from a study of college and university faculty who employ pedagogical strategies that are integrative in nature, uniting the poetry and rationality of teaching and learning. Video clips of faculty will be presented to provide examples of strategies they employ to foster holistic learning, create relationship-centered classrooms, unite a multicultural curriculum with Western structures of knowledge and engage students in contemplative practice.

  Session Facilitator: Laura Rendon, Chair and Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Iowa State University

  to top

• Facets of Awareness: Contemplative Approaches to Diversity Education
  Diversity education plays an increasing role in most higher education curricula including liberal arts and professional programs. This session will address how contemplative methods contribute to the goals of diversity education by asking students to look inward to cultivate awareness of what arises in experience while looking outward with compassion. Diversity methods ask students to examine the role of race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other areas of privilege in relationship to subjective, affective awareness of differences. We will demonstrate contemplative classroom exercises and sample assignments that are used in courses at Naropa University with opportunity for discussion with faculty and administrators.

  Session Facilitators: Suzanne Benally, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Senior Diversity Officer, Naropa University; Susan Burggraf, Professor of Contemplative Psychology, Faculty Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education, Naropa University; Thomas Coburn, President and Professor of Religious Studies, Naropa University; Gaylon Ferguson, Professor, Naropa University; Stuart J. Sigman, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Naropa University

• Spirituality and the Professoriate: Examining Faculty Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors
  In 2003, the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA launched a multi-year project to study the trends, patterns, and principles of spirituality among college students, and how the college experience influences spiritual development. The study also considers the spiritual and religious inclinations of college faculty and how they view the place of spirituality in the academy and within the undergraduate curriculum. In this workshop, findings from the faculty portion of the study will be presented and the participants will have an opportunity to discuss their impressions and reflect on associated implications for institutional practice.

  Session Facilitator: Jennifer Lindholm, Associate Director, Office of Undergraduate Education and Research, University of California – Los Angeles

  to top

• Creating a Lighthouse Community: Uniting Faculty Through Dialogue
  How can college faculty and administrators change the culture of an institution so that people who are accustomed to using their intellect also engage their heart? How can an institution help people feel safe enough to be open about who they are? During the 2005-2006 academic year, Spelman College President Beverly Daniel Tatum hosted a series of dinners in which faculty of diverse backgrounds came together for conversations about themselves. These dinners—and spin-off faculty-hosted dinners—were remarkable for the deep and heartfelt engagement they provoked. Beverly Daniel Tatum and faculty member Veta Goler, co-facilitators of this “Dinner and Dialogue” initiative, will give an interactive overview of these dinners that have begun changing Spelman’s culture.
  
  Session Facilitators: Beverly Daniel Tatum, President, Spelman College; Veta Goler, Professor of Dance and Chair of Drama and Dance, Spelman College

• Short Paper Presentations A
  The contributions listed below were selected from many that were submitted to the organizing committee of the conference. They reflect the range of interest and initiative of conference participants in relationship to the conference theme.

  Moderator: Sonia Shah, Professor, Bachelor Completion Program, California Institute of Integral Studies

  • “Teaching as Quest: Are We Plowers of the Field or Conductors of the Orchestra?”
    In the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text to Hinduism and some of the eastern philosophical systems, Krishna, an avatar of Lord Vishnu, tells his disciple, Arjuna, that he should be as a “plower of the field,” who prepares his ground, sows his seed, and does all that he can do to bring forth a bountiful harvest, but then “surrenders the fruits” by serenely accepting whatever outcome ensues. Orchestra conductors, on the other hand, have a clear vision of what they want produced, and make the musicians practice and practice until the desired outcome envisioned by the conductor is reached. This paper will take up questions about teaching as “plowing the field.” Can you teach without having some investment in the outcome? Should you teach without having some investment in the outcome? Even if one is trying to see teaching simply as “offering” rather than as “molding,” surely there are goals guiding the presentation of materials and structuring of discussion? Would certain kinds of contemplative practices support the “plowing of the field” model more than others? Part of my struggle to situate myself in the teaching landscape and understand how to follow the most dharmic path to teaching, is wrestling with the framework in which I should embed my teaching; Teaching as Quest represents the outcome of those ruminations

    Short Paper Presenter: Renee A Hill, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Race Relations, Virginia State University

  • “Toward an Epistemology and a Pedagogy of Meaning”
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge contended that, “every fact rightly considered unlocks a faculty of the human soul.” The purpose of this session is 1) to offer an epistemological model of what such “right consideration” might be, and 2) to suggest an experientially-based cognitive framework capable of addressing the possibility that meaning courses through all and shapes all things.Using the example of a simple leaf, participants will be guided to use their imaginations to perceive the connectedness of all things. In keeping with Gregory Bateson’s notion of the need for an “aesthetic epistemology” capable of revealing the “pattern which connects” all of creation, a paradigm for the growth of science and the arts based upon the imagination will be introduced. The necessary limitations of reductionism will be demonstrated. Lastly, the session is intended to provide participants with a sense of what Ralph Waldo Emerson called, “the miraculous on the common.” Both Emerson and the Greeks (who expressed such experience in terms of feeling of gratitude and awe) understood such inner activity to be the beginning of wisdom, the initial recognition of life with purpose and meaning.

    Short Paper Presenter: Jeffrey Kane, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Long Island University

  • “Pedagogies of Compassion, Pedagogies of Lack”
    Many undergraduates combine an acute ethical and political sense – the feeling that much is wrong with the world and needs to be healed – with stressed responses to their pressured lives, and anxiety that they lack what their studies demand. This presentation explores pedagogies that link a desire to lessen suffering in the world with a more compassionate relationship to oneself. Drawing on experiences in Philosophy 368: Global Justice, Obligation, and Compassion, Kahane discusses how to weave together analytical and contemplative approaches in the classroom, in ways that not only enrich understandings of a subject matter (in this case, accounts of obligation toward the global poor), but allow students to notice their own embodied experiences of empathy and dissociation, and to discover new ways of connecting kindness toward the world with kindness toward themselves. Kahane contrasts pedagogies that cultivate a sense of lack with those that help students feel a sense of their own value, looking in particular at students’ performance with analytical and free writing. And he shows how the familiar apparatus of undergraduate courses – papers, deadlines, grades – can provide occasions for students to bring their attention to their own entrenched patterns, so as to open spaces of curiosity and even freedom.

    Short Paper Presenter: David Kahane, Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta

  • “On Re-Entering The Threshold of Our Being: Six Steps Toward Contemplative Beholding ”
    As one response to the habitual distance, if not estrangement, many may feel before works of art, each other and the world, I have constructed a method of contemplative beholding. One academic application of this method, offered as an integrative seminar at Amherst College entitled, “The art of beholding,” seeks to define and engage both the “art” or skill of contemplative beholding and the “art” or wisdom such a beholding might provide. In this seminar, three distinct stages of “preparation,” “meditation” and “contemplation” lead toward a palpable, although elusive, encounter with an intimation of deepest reconciliation embodied by a given work of art as it is manifested in the pictorial gesture (“art”) left behind by that work’s artist. Success using this way of approaching works of art, finally, as subject rather than setting upon them exclusively as object of possession, analysis or historical documentation, occurs in unexpected and yet remarkably vivid form, in which the experience itself confirms the theory. When and if such “art” appears, the objective work of art will have given way to a poetic perception of animated well-being and felt wholeness, comparable to devoted prayer.

    Short Paper Presenter: Joel Upton, Professor of Fine Arts, Amherst College

  to top

• The Scholarship of Integration
  In his 1990 publication, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Ernest Boyer noted that: “Many are now asking: How can the work of the nation’s colleges and universities become more intellectually coherent? Is it possible for scholarship to be defined in ways that give more recognition to interpretative and integrative work?” These questions are still being asked, although the discussion is often framed as though the scholarship of integration is synonymous with interdisciplinary scholarship. In this session we contend that scholarship of integration is more than scholarship that takes place at the intersection of disciplines. The session will be organized as a facilitated discussion with all participants having the opportunity to contribute ideas and share approaches relevant to the scholarship of integration. We see the following questions as key: Is interdisciplinary work always integrative? Do our normal academic publishing venues support integrative work? How do we evaluate interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work when our standards are discipline based? What kinds of curriculum and pedagogy support integrative thinking and learning? If integrative scholarship and learning is a value, do we need to change graduate education in support of that value?
  
  Session Facilitators: Eugene Rice, American Association of Colleges and Universities; Judie Wexler, Academic Vice President and Dean of Faculty, California Institute of Integral Studies

• The Politics of Advancing Integrative Education
  The goal of the initiative, “Politics of Trust,” is to prepare Californians for effective civic engagement according to a faithful vision of themselves, their human nature, and their potential. The Program is focused on learning from from natural childbirth on through to hospice dying including self governance and transformative leadership. The program addresses the quality of higher education as providing students with development experiences for all their human capacities: that is by integrative education and whole person learning. The initiative promotes a study of a variety of aspects including diversity, technology, emotional and social intelligence, self esteem and collaboration, and globalization, service learning, and civic engagement. The session will explore how integrative learning could be more accepted in the academy, what research is needed to legitimate integrative learning, and how can best practices of integrative education be identified.
  
  Session Facilitator: John Vasconcellos, former chair of the California Legislature’s Review of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, and co-founder of the of the initiative “Politics of Trust.”

Keynote
Saturday, February 24, 2:00 – 3:15 pm

Is "Community" the Heart of Higher Education? Three Presidential Perspectives
Stephen Mittelstet, President, Richland College; Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, President, Kalamazoo College; Thomas Coburn, President, Naropa University

Most institutions of higher education aspire to embody community in some form. This session will explore commonalities and differences in those forms as three presidents from very different institutions—a private liberal arts college, a private master’s level university, and a public community college—engage the audience on such questions as: what does “community” mean? How do you recognize its presence or absence? What are the impediments to community? How might one create or increase it, on-campus and beyond? The goal of this interactive session is to deepen all participants' understanding of how an increased sense of community—as both means and end across a range of educational institutions—may help uncover the heart of higher education.

Concurrent Sessions
Saturday, February 24, 3:45 – 5:15 pm

• Guerilla Contemplation: Introducing Contemplative Pedagogies into Unwelcoming Situations
  Who could possibly have reservations about introducing contemplative practice into education? The political left may see it as a religious incursion; the political right may consider it suspiciously un-American; Protestants might suspect it's a Catholic thing; and Catholics might believe that contemplation is safely practiced only under monastic discipline. Each of these constituencies has a valid point, a perspective that may enrich our understanding of how subversive contemplative pedagogy is of the educational status quo. "Guerilla Contemplation" will attempt to process the real concerns educators may have about this enterprise and explore a multi-vocal, nuanced response.

  Session Facilitator: Mary Rose O’Reilley, Professor Emerita, University of St. Thomas

• Short Paper Presentations B
  The contributions listed below were selected from many that were submitted to the organizing committee of the conference. They reflect the range of interest and initiative of conference participants in relationship to the conference theme.

  Moderator: Joanne Gozawa, Professor, Transformative Learning and Change

  • “Playback Theatre for Educators”
    In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “the play’s the thing.” In Playback Theatre, the story is the thing. True life tales of audience members are brought to life by improvisational enactments, performed by specially trained actors. Upon a story being told, a Playback Theatre Conductor helps to shape the narrative; and the performers then transform the tale into a dramatic presentation. In Winter Quarter 2007, a Playback Theatre for Educators Course will be offered by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, in the College of Education, at the University of Denver. During the course, graduate students will experience their personal stories being performed and explore the possibilities of utilizing Playback Theatre as a pedagogical strategy for transformative instruction. During this conference session, the Playback Theatre process, as well as select individual and collective discoveries and insights of the course participants, will be discussed.

    Short Paper Presenter: Linda Sanders, Adjunct Faculty, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Denver

  • “The Living Classroom: Fields of Consciousness and the Spiritual Dynamics of Teaching”
    I’ve been a university professor for nearly thirty years, and the longer I have taught, the more convinced I am that there is a form of collective consciousness operating in my classroom. This talk explores the inner workings of this consciousness from both a scientific and personal perspective. It draws from my forthcoming book The Living Classroom – a “Parker Palmer meets Stanislav Grof” exercise – to explore the mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart connections that spring up spontaneously between teachers and students, unbidden but too frequent and too pointed to be accidental. I examine the influences that radiate invisibly around us as we teach, how a teacher’s “private” spiritual practice at home can sometimes trigger dramatic transformational shifts in our students. Combining Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field theory and field consciousness studies, I propose that minds have an inherent tendency to synchronize with other minds, that groups of students generate learning fields, true group minds that influence individual learning. In short, this talk is about the forces of nature that weave our minds together as we work, entangling the edges of our being into collective patterns that are clearly visible if we know what to look for.

    Short Paper Presenter: Chris Bache, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University

  • “Expanding Ethical Conversations in University Life”
    The presenters will provide highlights of their work at Saint Leo University. The university, originally founded in 1889 as a Catholic colony by Benedictine monks and nuns, is locatedin a rural enclave north of Tampa, Florida. In order to nourish its Catholic roots, faculty members actively work to translate the mission and cores values into concrete practices that include mentoring faculty, curricular offerings and conversational classroom techniques. The presenters will offer contrasting clerical and secular approaches on topics to include: 1) a newly organized minor in Philosophy and Religion 2.) widening the conversation on ethics to include faculty from across the university to teach courses in applied ethics, 3.) teaching the foundation of ethics from a theological and secular perspective, and 4) a way to measure the strength and quality of students’analytical and ethical reasoning in a campus population of 1,700 students. The outcome of the 2006 UCLA survey of college freshmen which demonstrated that this is the most civic-minded and politically engaged class at the University since the survey began in 1966 to continue and expand the conversation on ethics in university life.

    Short Paper Presenters: Anthony Kissel, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Saint Leo University; Margaret Ostrenko, Assistant Professor of Communication Management, Saint Leo University

  • “Speaking From Silence: The Practice of Insight Dialogue”
    This paper will introduce Insight Dialogue, an interpersonal mindfulness practice based on deep, reflective, and connected listening and speaking. Insight Dialogue invites us to pause out of habitual, reflexive speech, and awaken to being fully present with others, enhancing the kind of concourse in which kindness, clarity, and intellectual curiosity and debate thrive. When we listen and speak in this way, we are poised to connect with our own deeper purposes as students, staff, administrators, and faculty. Making a conscious commitment to listening with the intention of fully receiving what others have to say enhances creativity and interpersonal astuteness, and lowers the friction that pervades many academic and professional collaborations.

    Short Paper Presenter:Nancy Waring, Assistant Professor, Lesley University

    to top

• Exploring Stability and Transformation at Smith College’s School for Social Work
  Leadership that attends to the heart of the academy must clearly discern where vision unfolds in the intersections between the longings in the leader’s heart and institutional needs. This session will provide space for exploring the unfolding of vision as it attends to the need for institutional stability and transformation. Stability is not stagnation; it is holding carefully to the past as we live in the present and respond to the unfolding needs of the future. Transformation is concerned with multiple ways of knowing, thinking and being in the process of responding. Engagement and steadfastness in dialogue are essential.

  Session Facilitator: Carolyn Jacobs, Dean, School for Social Work, Smith College

• Bringing Contemplative Practice into the Visual Arts Curriculum
  The visual arts are often taught as a highly individualistic, fashion-driven enterprise. But what happens when students learn practices of observation and mindfulness in order to nurture their capacity for silence and solitude, as well as collaboration? We will experiment with a few simple exercises and discuss strategies for deepening the relationship of contemplative practice and the visual arts.

  Session Facilitator: Deborah Haynes, Professor of Art, Director of Libby Arts Residential Academic Program, University of Colorado - Boulder

  to top

• Assessing Transformational Change
  This session will explore ways of assessing transformational change in students when they participate in an educational process that explicitly holds personal transformation as an essential element of program. The Session Facilitators will address whole-person education, the elements of pedagogy and curriculum employed at ITP for experiential learning, and non-academic assessment of the transformation process. Participants will be invited to share their own experiences and approaches to transformational education.

  Session Facilitators: Robert Frager, Patrick Marius Koga, Patricia Sohl, Core Faculty, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

• Spirituality, Sexual Orientation, and Inclusion
  As our awareness grows of the importance and value of diversity on our campuses and in the larger community, what part will we play in forming alliances with those from sexual minority groups? Throughout history, from various spiritual traditions and countries around the globe, members of this group have shared their stories as examples of overcoming obstacles to self-acceptance and self love and the ensuing opportunity for creativity, wisdom and ability to embrace difference. This session is designed to offer support and guidance as we share our struggles and successes in an effort to further the goal of inclusivity for all.

  Session Facilitator: Richard Buggs, PhD, Dean of Alumni and Director of Travel Programs (formerly Dean of Students), California Institute of Integral Studies; Christian de la Huerta, Founder & President, Revolutionary Wisdom/Q-Spirit

• Site Visit 1: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
  The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian art. More than just an art museum—the museum is your ticket to Asia. Here, travel through 6,000 years of history, trek across seven major regions, and sample the cultures of numerous countries.

  For more information visit: http://www.asianart.org

• Site Visit 2: Grace Cathedral
  The Labyrinth is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking a replica of the Chartres labyrinth, laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France around 1220, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition that is insisting to be reborn.

  The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart.

  For more information visit: http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/

• Site Visit 3: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  One of the world's most innovative museums of modern and contemporary art, the permanent collection and current exhibitions of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art are presented in a magnificent building by the Swiss architect Mario Botta across the street from the gardens of Yerba Buena Center.

  For more information visit: http://sfmoma.org/

• Site Visit 4: Museum of the African Diaspora
  An international museum, based in San Francisco, MoAD is committed to showcasing the "best of the best" from the African Diaspora. To facilitate this, MoAD reaches out and initiates collaborative ventures with institutions of similar vision from around the world. Already, the museum has forged rich relationships with the British Museum, the Museum of African Art (NY), Eileen Harris Norton and Peter Norton, and the University of California Berkeley, amongst others.

  For more information visit: http://www.moadsf.org/

  Dinner Keynote
  Saturday, February 24, 7:30 – 8:30 pm

  Global Interconnectedness and Media: The Challenge and Opportunity
  Alisa Miller, President and CEO, Public Radio International (PRI)

   

  We live at a pivotal moment of human history. Despite tremendous advances in knowledge and technology that have led to safer, healthier lives for many of us, one billion people in the world still live in extreme poverty. This is at the same time that Americans seem to know less about the world around them, their many connections to it, and the increasing complexities and interrelationships between major issues such as religion, security, economic development, health, and the environment. In short, increasing this knowledge of our increasingly globally interdependent world is critical for all our future. Developing new technologies and partnerships, US media must take steps to reshape and elevate how key global issues are presented and experienced by Americans.

  to top

Concurrent Sessions
Sunday, February 25, 8:45 – 10:15 am

• Rescuing the Affective in Teaching and Learning
  Historically, institutions of higher learning have treated the affective and cognitive as separate spheres often marginalizing the heart in the service of the mind. Affective constructs are virtually absent from contemporary analyses of the college classroom. The purpose of this session is to explore the place of the affective in teaching and in enduring learning, describe the cognitive-affective relationship that is derived from current research and scholarly work in this area, and introduce ways of incorporating the affective in our pedagogical practices.

  Session Facilitator: Patti Owen Smith, Professor, Oxford College, Emory University; Isa Williams, Professor of Women’s Studies/Director of Experiential Learning, Agnes Scott College

• Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education
  This session is anchored by the text, Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, (Chickering, Dalton and Stamm, Jossey Bass, 2005) and has three parts: a brief opening presentation, a section in which participants complete the "Inventory for Assessing the Moral and Spiritual Growth Initiatives of Colleges and Universities”, and a plenary discussion.

  Session Facilitator: Arthur Chickering, Special Assistant to the President, Goddard College

  to top

• The Contemplative Classroom and the Suffering World
  In architecture classes, students meditate on earth, air, fire, and water. In poetry classes, students sit in silence and then free write. In art history, students learn intimacy with objects. Law students learn deep listening. Media students bring contemplative awareness to deconstructing images of violence. Since 1997, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in partnership with ACLS has sponsored academic fellows to develop courses incorporating a contemplative practice. In this session, we will discuss successful courses and hear ideas for new ones. We will also explore the connection between the contemplative way of knowing and compassionate action in the world.

  Session Facilitator: Mirabai Bush, Director, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

• Synthesizing Dialogues
  In this session, a facilitator will work with conference members to identify the most significant and stimulating themes of the conference. In particular, we will be looking for cross-cutting and integrating ideas and initiatives that succeed in weaving together the many individual contributions. There will be no presentations within these sessions, but rather a carefully facilitated exchange of impressions, observations, ideas and experiences.

  to top

• The Gift in the Story: Folktales as a Tool for Exploring Generosity
  The Generosity of Spirit Story Circles are the result of four years of inquiry into the nature of generosity of spirit as it appears throughout the stories of the world's traditions. These circles are based on the premise that when we share the best of who we are, we become wiser together. When we bring our wisdom, our courage, and our generosity to the common table, we become infinitely better at solving our common problems. Stories weave us together and teach us how to live together. Come join us and explore the gift of story.

  Session Facilitators: Margo McLoughlin, Wayne Muller, Generosity of Spirit Project, Fetzer Institute

• Contemplative Inquiry: The Contribution of Contemplative Mind to Integrative Education
  The academy has well-articulated the role of critical reasoning, critical writing and quantitative analysis. In all fields, however, much depends on the slow development of mature judgment whether in the sciences, humanities, or the arts. One gradually gains not only technical competencies in a field, but aspires to make original contributions to it. The ability to “see” research questions, to hold the ambiguities and uncertainties associated with research, and develop the capacities required for insight, these are all qualities of a contemplative approach to knowledge. Using examples and exercises, we will explore the important contributions that contemplative inquiry and pedagogy can make to integrative knowing and learning.

  Session Facilitator: Arthur Zajonc, Professor, Amherst College

  to top

• Understanding College Students’ Spiritual Development: Reflections on Student and Faculty Perspectives and Goals
  The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has completed surveys of students (2003, 2004) and faculty (2004) that allow us to compare their respective attitudes toward the role of religion/spirituality in academic programs. What is the impact on pedagogy of the growing interest in this phenomenon? Is there an expectation that faculty will incorporate elements of spirituality into their teaching? What do we mean by “spirituality”? What are students looking for? How does faculty feel about all this? In the workshop, an analysis of selected elements of the surveys will be presented and the participants will have an opportunity to discuss the findings and related ramifications for institutional practice.
  
  Session Facilitators: Peter Laurence, Executive Director, Education as Transformation Project, Wellesley College; Jennifer Lindholm, Associate Director, Office of Undergraduate Education and Research, University of California – Los Angeles; Diana Denton, Associate Chair, Department of Drama and Speech Communication, University of Waterloo

• The Spirit of Academia: Promoting Social Change through Creating, Nurturing and Sustaining a Civil Society
  In this session, a facilitating team will lead an interactive session in which participants will have an opportunity to review the areas of civil and social engagement that matter to them and to share these with others in the creation of common insights, goals and wisdom that the group will collectively evoke. The session draws upon a sense of responsibility for tikkun olam - the repair of the world - as it applies to the work of universities in contributing toward the understanding and practice of social engagement aimed at creating and sustaining a just and civil society. This model for developing a vision for community engagement has been successfully integrated into the programming of initiatives in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences at Lesley University through its work in the United States, Israel, Palestine and Africa.
  
  Session Facilitators: Julia Halevy, Dott. Ped., Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University; Vivien Marcow-Speiser PhD, ADTR, LMHC,NBCC, Professor in Dance Therapy and Director of International and Collaborative Programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University; Sharlene Voogd Cochrane, PhD, Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Inquiry Division in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University; Susan Gere, PhD, faculty member, Director of the Division of Counseling and Psychology and the Director of the Institute for Body, Mind and Spirituality in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University

• Creating a Holistic Environment through Campus Leadership
  It takes campus leadership to create a holistic environment. Such leadership empowers a campus to recognize that authentic communication, institutional involvement in the planning process, and respect for human resources are necessary to create a holistic environment. The session facilitators will cite examples from their own experiences as campus leaders and invite the session participants to draw on their experiences.
  
  Session Facilitators: Ann Ponder, Chancellor, University of North Carolina at Asheville and Jake Schrum, President, Southwestern University

• A View from Religious Studies regarding Spirituality in Higher Education
  Religious Studies Departments are flourishing in all sectors of higher education: research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. As the reports from UCLA Higher Education Research Center have pointed out, students are increasingly interested in the study of their own religious and spiritual traditions as well as those of others. Perhaps no discipline wrestles more with how to academically approach spirituality in the classroom and in scholarship than Religious Studies. Come dialog with professors of Religious Studies from all sectors of higher education as they share their experiences and viewpoints on engaging spirituality in the classroom and in scholarship, as well as their commentary on the broader spirituality movement in higher education.
  
  Session Facilitators: Harold Roth, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, and Director of Contemplative Studies, Brown University; and Elizabeth Ursic, Professor of Religious Studies, Mesa Community College

Closing Keynote
Sunday, February 25, 10:45 am - 12 noon

Trustworthy Leadership
Diana Chapman-Walsh, President, Wellesley College

We need our graduates—this new generation of such great diversity and promise—to be active participants in a fractured world, potent advocates for human rights, confident leaders willing to take risks in the pursuit of intellectual honesty, freedom to disagree, justice and fairness, global citizenship, and mutual responsibility: qualities of mind and character that are becoming counter cultural. To develop more effective leaders, we must begin by asking ourselves whether we in the academy, faculty and administrators, are offering our students leadership that is worthy of their trust.