Mindfulness Based Leadership Development
Leadership is not simply about the leader’s ability to influence the others. The underlying assumption of this course is that the ability to lead begins with the process of self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-leadership. In this course we will review traditional models of leadership and explore emergent models that incorporate intentionality, mindfulness, authenticity, transformation, and service and art and science of mindfulness practice. Central to this course is the practical mindfulness training. Respond not React. Through mindfulness training, we will learn how to cultivate attention and awareness that allows us to live all aspects of our lives with a great sense of skill, connection, openness, and balance. Paying attention to the activity of the mind for even a few minutes yields powerful and potentially valuable information. Our capacity to be listen deeply, to make informed decisions, to effectively handle stress, to ignite innovation, and to access previously untapped resources and apply them rely on our capacity to be mindful and present. When we are fully present in the moment, we optimize our capacity for self-awareness, self-regulation, and relationship management.
Mindfulness and Contemplative Engagement
When we are fully present in the moment, we optimize our capacity for mindful engagement with ourselves and the world. This course introduces the art and science of mindfulness practice and explores how contemplative approaches can scaffold and undergird critical engagement in areas such as social and climate justice, place and belonging, our relationship with the natural environment, design, creativity, and leadership development. The course uses an experiential design to expose students to different mindfulness and contemplative practices. Through this training, we will learn how to cultivate attention and awareness that allows us to live all aspects of our lives with a great sense of skill, connection, openness, and balance.
Intersections between Management and Social Justice
The course facilitates an examination of how and if management and managers can be vehicles to advance social justice in different forms – ecological, economic, racial, sexual or gender, design etc. Grounded in critical social theories, it explores how and if someone interested in using management ideas to generate social justice inhabits a contradiction. And is it possible to think of management in terms of larger questions of social justice, to create workplaces and organizations in general that are more democratic and inclusive? The course requires students to attend or view recordings of the Management & Social Justice Conversation Series, ground them in the literature and take an actively engaged and critically reflective stance towards the topics and organizations we study. We will look at themes such as emancipatory management practices, forms of inclusion in workplaces, intersectional management practices, indigenous knowledge/politics, and ecological activism, and organizations
Mindfulness and Sacred Ecologies
Informed by decolonization approaches and socio-ecological perspectives, this course centers individual and collective healing, identity examinations, critical and generative reflections for flourishing in the context of our relationship with the natural environment using mindfulness and contemplative pedagogy and technological immersion experience through VR. The course will utilize 3D VR infrastructure for enhancing the collective/group experience of shared exploration, peer learning, and community building. By the successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 1) Develop and articulate their own relationship with the physical and natural environment; 2) Conduct socio-ecological history of a location of choice; 3) Take, edit, and share 3-D videos of places that are personally sacred/meaningful to them; 4) Develop, refine, and use interview protocols for data collection; 5) Code interview data to identify key themes around a phenomenon.