About the Association
The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education is a new initiative of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society's Academic Program.
Mission
The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education is committed to transforming higher education through the creation of a community of contemplative teachers, scholars, administrators and students. It supports the emergence of a broad culture of contemplation in the academy and the development of contemplative pedagogy, research methodology and epistemology that will be of value to students, teachers and researchers.
History
Founded May 1, 2008
The initiative for a professional association for members of the academic community who are integrating contemplative practices into teaching and scholarship began in 2006 with a proposal to the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. The initiative arose out of the Center’s Academic Program, which has granted fellowships to 140 professors through the Contemplative Practice Fellowship Program, a program founded with the American Council of Learned Societies and the Fetzer Institute. The Center has also sponsored contemplative retreats, summer curriculum development sessions, and national meetings and conferences.
The Association is modeled on other learned societies and sponsors conferences, retreats, and curriculum development sessions supporting scholars and researchers investigating and implementing contemplative practices. It makes papers, conference proceedings, and other publications available, especially online, and supports a social and professional network of scholars and professors through a private website.
An April 2007 survey of 700 professors in the Center’s network received 190 responses to questions about the value of an association and the services it would provide. Respondents supported a $50 -$100 membership fee and indicated their preferences for services from greatest to least, as follows: national conference, sessions on curriculum development, retreats, access to bibliography, network directory, quarterly newsletter, and online forums.
In May 2007 the Center’s Board approved the Association and in July formed a steering committee. In September the Board endorsed a final proposal including a draft mission statement, membership qualifications, a mandate for the steering committee, and the intention to develop a board of advisors.
The Steering Committee defined three phases for the development of the Association. Phase one was preparation; phase two was announcing the Association and soliciting membership. Phase three will be realized during 2008-09 as the Association plans and announces national and regional conferences; biannual curriculum development sessions and retreats; quarterly e-newsletters; an archive of syllabi and reports available online; and a website to connect the members.
Academic Committee
Mirabai Bush
Executive Director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Charlie Halpern
Scholar in Residence, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley
Deborah Klimburg-Salter
Director, The Cultural History of the Western Himalayas, University of Vienna
Joan Konner
Professor and Dean Emerita, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
Sharon Daloz Parks
Associate Director, Whidbey Institute
David Scott
Former Chancellor, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Arthur Zajonc
Academic Program Director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Physics, Amherst College
Association Steering Committee
Arthur Zajonc
Academic Program Director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Physics, Amherst College
Mirabai Bush
Executive Director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Betty Sue Flowers
Director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
Carolyn Jacobs
Dean and Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor, Smith College School for Social Work
Joan Konner
Professor and Dean Emerita, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
Hal Roth
Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, Brown University
Association Staff
Carrie Bergman
Creative Director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Sunanda Markus
Academic Program Coordinator, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Beth Wadham
Academic Program Associate, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Academic Committees: Biographical Information
Mirabai Bush
As Director of the Center, Mirabai brings a unique background of organizational management, teaching, and spiritual practice. A founding board member of the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization, she directed the Seva Guatemala Project, which supports sustainable agriculture and integrated community development. Also at Seva, she co-developed Sustaining Compassion, Sustaining the Earth, a series of retreats and events for grassroots environmental activists on the interconnection of spirit and action. She is co-author, with Ram Dass, of Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service, published by Random House. Mirabai has organized, facilitated, and taught workshops, weekends, and courses on spirit and action for more than 20 years at institutions including Omega Institute, Naropa Institute, Findhorne, Zen Mountain Monastery, University of Massachusetts, San Francisco Zen Center, Buddhist Study Center at Barre, MA, Insight Meditation Society, and the Lama Foundation. She has a special interest in the uncovering and recovery of women's spiritual wisdom to inform work for social change. She has taught women's groups with Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Sharon Salzberg, Joan Halifax, Margo Adler, Starhawk, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Vicky Noble, and other leaders.
Her spiritual studies include meditation study at the Burmese Vihara in Bodh Gaya, India, with Shri S.N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra; bhakti yoga with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; and studies with Tibetan lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kyabje Gehlek Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others. She also did five years of intensive practice in Iyengar yoga and five years of Aikido with Kanai Sensei. Her earlier religious study included 20 years of Catholic schooling, ending with Georgetown University graduate study in medieval literature. She holds an ABD in American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Before entering the foundation world, Mirabai was the first professional woman to work on the Saturn-Apollo moonflight at Cape Canaveral and later co-founded and directed Illuminations, Inc., from 1973 to 1985 in Cambridge, MA. Her innovative business approaches, based on mindfulness practice, were reported in Newsweek, Inc., Fortune, and the Boston Business Journal. She has also worked on educational programs with inner-city youth of color.
Mirabai has trekked, traveled, and lived in many countries, including Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Morocco, Ireland, England, Scotland, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Italy, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. She is an organic gardener in Western Massachusetts and the mother of one adult son, Owen.
Betty Sue Flowers
Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D., became Director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in 2002. Before that time, she was the Joan Negley Kelleher Centennial Professor in the English Department at the University of Texas, as well as a Piper Professor and a member of the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. During her years at the University of Texas, she also served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Plan II Honors Program.
Flowers is a native Texan with degrees from the University of Texas and the University of London. Her scholarly publications include a book entitled "Browning and the Modern Tradition" and articles on Donald Barthelme, Adrienne Rich, Christina Rossetti, poetry therapy, writing and other subjects. Her annotated edition of Christina Rossetti's complete poems was published in 2001 in the Penguin Classics Series. She also edited "Daughters and Fathers" with Lynda Boose, as well as four books in collaboration with Bill Moyers: "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," "A World of Ideas," "Healing and the Mind," and "Genesis." She has published three books of poetry: "Four Shields of Power" (with three other poets), "Extending the Shade" and "Blue Lioness" (2002).
Flowers was consultant for the nationally televised series, "The Power of Myth" as well as a host for the radio series "The Next 200 Years". Her 10-part television series, "Conversation with Betty Sue Flowers," was aired on the Austin PBS affiliate, KLRU. Flowers has served as a moderator for executive seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, as a consultant for NASA, as a member of the Envisioning Network for General Motors, as a member of the vision team for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as a Visiting Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. In 1992, and again in 1995, 1998 and 2001, she worked with an international team to write Global Scenarios for Shell International in London-stories about the future of the world for the next 30 years. She has edited a book in conjunction with Joseph Jaworski on the inner dimensions of leadership, "Synchronicity," and is finishing another with Jaworski, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer on "Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future." Flowers was the editor of global scenarios for sustainable development and scenarios for the future of biotechnology, both sponsored by the World Business Council in Geneva.
Carolyn Jacobs
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. She maintains a spiritual direction practice.
Recent publications include: Jacobs, C. (2007) “Race, ethnicity, and class: A conversation with Hilda Ryūmon Gutiérrez Baldoquín, Sharon Suh, and Arinna Weisman, moderated by Carolyn Jacobs” in (Eds.) Gregory, P. N. and Mrozik, S., Women practicing Buddhism: American experiences. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications; Jacobs, C. (2007) “Spiritual Development” in Lesser, J. G. and Pope, D. S. (Eds.) Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Chapter 8, 188-203. VT: Allyn and Bacon; Jacobs, C. (2006) “Transformation and Kaleidoscope Memories” Smith College Studies in Social Work, 76 (4); and Jacobs, C. (2004) “Spirituality and end-of-life care practice for social workers” in Berzoff, J. & Silverman, P. R. (Eds.) Living with dying: A handbook for end-of-life healthcare practitioners. (pp. 188-205) NY: Columbia University Press.
Charlie Halpern
Charles Halpern, currently Scholar in Residence at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, is a public interest entrepreneur, an innovator in legal education, a pioneer in the public interest law movement, and a long-time meditator. From 1989-2000, he served as the founding President of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, stimulating the development of a creative program in the area of contemplative practice. In the early '90s, he hosted meetings of the Working Group on Contemplative Mind in Society, and subsequently has served as the chair of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. The Foundation supported the revival of Jewish meditation, meditation retreats for environmental and social activists, and programs to restore the contemplative dimension in law, journalism, and business.
He was the Founding Dean of the City University of New York Law School at Queens College, a public interest law school with a novel curriculum. Previously, he was a professor at Stanford and Georgetown Law Schools, and a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School. He was the co-founder of the Center for Law and Social Policy (1969), the Mental Health Law Project (now the Bazelon Center for Law and Mental Health) (1971), and the Council for Public Interest Law (now the Alliance for Justice) (1976). After graduating with honors from Yale Law School and Harvard College, he practiced law at Arnold & Porter, in Washington, D.C.. He was chair of the board for Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, a new think tank in New York City, until 2002 and continues to serve on the board. He has practiced meditation for the past 20 years, with a variety of Jewish and Buddhist teachers.
Deborah Klimburg-Salter
Bio coming soon.
Joan Konner
Joan Konner is Professor and Dean Emerita of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She served as Dean from 1988-1997 and as Publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review from 1988-1999.
Before going to Columbia, Ms. Konner worked in both public and commercial television for 26 years. During that time she produced and wrote more than 50 documentaries and served as Executive Producer of several major public affairs series. Her work has been honored by almost every major award for broadcast journalism, including 16 Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Television and Radio. As President and Executive Producer of Public Affairs Television Inc., in partnership with Bill Moyers from 1986-1988, Ms. Konner produced Moyers: In Search Of The Constitution, God And Politics, and Joseph Campbell And The Power Of Myth.
During her 12 years as a writer, director and producer with NBC News from 1965-1977, she produced such documentaries as Danger! Radioactive Waste; Mary Jane Grows Up; Marijuana In The 70's; Of Women And Men; The Search For Something Else and New World Hard Choices: American Foreign Policy In 1976. In recognition of her body of work, she was awarded the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism's Alumni Award in 1975 and the New Jersey Press Women's Association Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in 1990.
In 1977, Ms. Konner joined WNET/13, public television in New York, as Executive producer for National Public Affairs Programs. She served as Executive Producer of Bill Moyers Journal until 1981. From 1981 to 1984, she was Vice President, Director of Programming and Executive Producer for the Metropolitan Division of WNET/13. Among the programs she conceived and produced were New York & Co; Hizzoner; My New York; Walt Whitman And Friends; Innovation and Currents. Under her leadership, the station earned numerous honors, including 11 Emmy Awards.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Ms. Konner began her journalism career as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist for The (Bergen) Record, Hackensack, NJ. For 10 years, she served as chairman of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Awards, as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board and as a juror for the National Magazine Awards. She is currently chair of the John Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Reporting. She also served as an advisor to the Markle Commission on the Media and the Electorate and on several committees of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.
Ms. Konner has also been a Trustee of Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, the Rockland Center for the Arts, Radio and Television News Director's Foundation and the Religion Newswriters Foundation. At present she is a Board member of the Providence Journal, Providence, RI. She is also a trustee of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation.
Sharon Daloz Parks
Bio coming soon.
Hal Roth
Harold D. Roth is Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Brown University. Roth is a specialist in Early Chinese Religious Thought, Taoism, the History of East Asian Religions, and the Comparative Study of Mysticism. His publications include four books, The Textual History of the Huai-nan Tzu (Association for Asian Studies, 1992), "Inward Training" and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (Columbia University Press, 1999), Daoist Identity: Cosmology. Lineage, and Ritual (w/Livia Kohn) (University of Hawaii Press, 2002) and A Companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu: the Inner Chsapters (Society for Asian and Comparative Philoosophy, 2003) and more than two dozen articles on the early history and religious thought of the Taoist tradition and on the textual history and textual criticism of classical Chinese works.
Roth's articles have been published in many leading academic journals, including the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Early China, Taoist Resources, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, China Review International, the Journal of Chinese Religions and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and he was written chapters or articles in such works as The Religions of China in Practice, the revised Sources of Chinese Tradition and Encyclopedia of Religion, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the festschrift for Angus Graham.
In addition, Roth has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation For International Scholarly Exchange. He also was awarded a Wriston Fellowship for Teaching Excellence from Brown University. Roth has served his academic field in a variety of ways. First, he served on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions for a decade starting in 1993, during which time he has also served on the editorial boards of four international journals of Taoism and Early Chinese Studies. In addition to this he was the founder and Co-Organizer of the New England Symposium of Chinese Thought (1988-93), the organizer of a total of four academic panels at the Association for Asian Studies and American Oriental Society, and the Co-Organizer of the Second American-Japanese Conference on Taoist Studies (1998).
He has also given papers at numerous conferences of academic organizations including ones in China, Japan, Holland, and Canada, and he has presented more than two dozen invited lectures at such institutions as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Stanford, Dartmouth, McGill, and Tôyô University in Japan. At Brown he has been Concentration Advisor in the Departments of Religious Studies (1987-93, 2000-2001), and East Asian Studies (1991-98), and has sat on numerous department and university committees, including the Tenure, Promotions, and Appointments Committee that he will chair in the 2004-05 academic year. Roth is continuing his research on early Taoism, comparative mysticism, and on the critical preparation and analysis of early Chinese texts through a number of ongoing projects including the first complete English translation of the important second-century B.C.E. Taoist compendium, Huai-nan Tzu, and a study and translation of the essays on "inner cultivation" in the Kuan Tzu.
Arthur Zajonc, Steering Committee Chair
Arthur Zajonc is professor of physics at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1978. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He has been visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the Universities of Rochester and Hannover. He has been Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics he researched electron-atoms collision physics and radiative transfer in dense vapors. His research has included studies in parity violation in atoms, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between sciences, the humanities and contemplation. He has written extensively on Goethe's science. He is author of the book Catching the Light, co-author of The Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe's Way of Science. In 1997 he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind and Life dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (Oxford 2004). He again organized the 2002 dialogue with the Dalai Lama, “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life,” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” dialogue in 2003 (see www.mindandlife.org). He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1994-2002), president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.
Association Staff: Biographical Information
Carrie Bergman
Creative Director
Before coming to the Center, Carrie graduated from Dickinson College with degrees in Studio Arts and Anthropology and worked for Dickinson's museum and art department. She began experimenting with web technologies about ten years ago and has designed and managed contemplativemind.org and the Center's other web projects since 2001. She also creates publications and informational materials and generally serves as a "technology facilitator" for the Center. Carrie began studying Tibetan Buddhism in 1996 and is a student of Garchen Rinpoche. Creative arts such as painting and songwriting are her primary forms of contemplative practice.
Sunanda Markus
Academic Program Coordinator
In her role as Academic Program Coordinator, Sunanda is responsible for the management of the Contemplative Practice fellowship program and coordination of the program’s conferences and regional meetings. She also frequently teaches yoga at meetings and retreats hosted by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
She served on the board of the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization, for 12 years where she worked with Mirabai Bush on the Guatemala Project. She also served on the board of the Insight Meditation Society.
She is a student of Vipassana meditation and took her first course in 1972 in India with the Theravadan Buddhist Vipassana teacher S.N. Goenka. She also studied bhakti yoga with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba and Tibetan Buddhism with Tsoknyi Rinpoche. She began her yoga practice in 1994 and has studied over the years with Iyengar, Anusara, and Ashtanga yoga teachers.
She lives in Montreal, Quebec where she is the managing director of a small publishing company.
Beth Wadham
Academic Associate
Beth joins the Center as Academic Associate to support the existing program and the development of new initiatives. She is a former restaurateur and teacher of high school literature in a Waldorf School, and in between had the opportunity to work with Arthur Zajonc, Academic program director, to bring forward The Barfield School of Sunbridge College, a new graduate school that integrates art, academic research and contemplative inquiry.
She earned her BA in Literature from Smith College, where she completed an honor’s study of William Blake, and has a teaching certificate from the Waldorf Teacher Training Institute, where she developed courses on the history of language; reading and writing poetry; Melville’s Moby Dick; and the Bible.
Her abiding interest in the contemplative dimension of life started early, probably while gazing at the stars in the night sky, and has been nurtured by meetings with kindred spirits and study and practice in diverse traditions such as anthroposophy and yoga. As part of the Center staff, she welcomes the chance to bring the values of contemplative practice wider and deeper into the mainstream culture.