Grant Amount
$20,000
Description of Organization
This Collaboration Grant between Naropa University and Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Inc. supported the “Roundtable on Contemplative Practice, Social Change and the Future of Higher Education” to be held in March of 2016 for leaders in contemplative education and higher education thought leaders, which is designed to forge a new vision for American higher education to create educational environments that foster meaningful lives of engagement and diverse ways of knowing.
Recognizing the growing challenges in postsecondary education and the potential for contemplative education to creatively contribute to solutions, we propose a public Roundtable conference of thought (or “non-thought”) leaders in higher education, to be held in March of 2016 at Naropa University in Boulder, entitled: “Contemplative Practice, Social Change, and the Future of Higher Education,” Our Roundtable conference is designed to forge a new vision for American higher education in order to create educational environments for all that foster meaningful lives of engagement and diverse ways of knowing. We will bring leaders in contemplative education together with higher education thought leaders to:
- Envision new solutions to the crisis of skyrocketing costs, increasing student loan debt, and systemic exclusion of marginalized groups (Gallup-Lumina 2013; Mettler 2014);
- Address the loss of meaningful and impactful curricular and co-curricular content for the sake of narrow vocational training;
- Challenge wealth and status as measures of success of college graduates by identifying new measures of well-being and flourishing (Purdue-Gallup 2014);
- Foster appropriate integration of new technologies and delivery systems that nurture these perspectives;
- Create new collaborations across specialties so that both contemplative educators, students, and broader higher education leaders may address and overcome their own limitations and challenges for the overall benefit of society.