Registration
To register for this conference, please email Geri DeLuca, Gerdlu@aol.com, or 718-941-2835.
Space is limited, so please register as soon as possible to ensure your place.
Agenda
8:30 – 9:00 Registration (a light breakfast will be served)
9:00 – 9:30 Welcome
Mirabai Bush, Director, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Geraldine DeLuca, Professor of English, CUNY, Brooklyn College
David Forbes, Professor of Education, CUNY, Brooklyn College
9:30 – 9:45 Meditation led by Geraldine DeLuca
9:45 – 10:45 “Contemplative Education Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway:
Dispatches on Teaching Mindfulness in Arkansas”
Introduction by David Forbes
Presentation by Daniel Holland, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – noon Roundtable discussion
Contemplative Practices and Pedagogy
Amy Cheng, Associate Professor of Studio Art, SUNY College at New Paltz
Clifford Hill, Teachers College, Columbia University
Rick Repetti, Kingsborough Community College
Geraldine DeLuca, CUNY, Brooklyn College
Introduction and moderation by David Forbes
Noon – 1:15 Lunch (lunch passes will be distributed for use at the cafeteria)
1:15 – 2:15 Workshops
6 breakout discussions on the topic of curriculum development and the uses of contemplative practice in the classroom.
Facilitated by:
Daniel Holland (Room # 8301)
Amy Cheng (# 8304)
Geraldine DeLuca (Segal Theater)
David Forbes (Segal Theater)
Clifford Hill (# 8400)
Rick Repetti (# 8402).
2:15 – 2:30 Break (coffee, tea, and cookies will be served)
2:30 – 3:15 Building the Field of
Contemplative Pedagogy, Epistemology, and Applied Contemplative Practice
Presentation by Mirabai Bush
3:15 - 3:30 Closing
Participant Bios
Mirabai Bush was a founding board member of the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization. At Seva, she directed the Seva Guatemala Project, which supports sustainable agriculture and integrated community development. She also 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.
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.
Amy Cheng is a contemplative practice fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind and the American Council of Learned Societies for 2005-2006. She was born in Taiwan, raised in Brazil, Oklahoma, and Texas. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has had one-person exhibitions at Gallery 456 and Penny Liebman Contemporary Art in New York City, at the Harrison Gallery in Boca Raton, FL, and Art & Soul Gallery in Boulder, CO. Her 2005 group exhibitions include, “Brave New Worlds” at the Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Program in Long Island City, NY (catalogue), “WAX: Encaustic Techniques in Contemporary Art” at The Brush Art Gallery, Lowell, MA, “The Obsessive Surface” at the Tower Fine Arts Gallery, State University of New York at Rockport, and “Postcards from the Edge” at the Robert Miller Gallery, NY, NY. She has been commissioned to produce a mosaic column for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and a suite of murals for an auditorium at P.S. 58, The School of Heroes, in Queens, NY. The Florida Art in State Buildings Program has installed one of her paintings, “No Condition Is Permanent”, in Florida Atlantic University’s S.W. Wimberly Library. She has received two New York Foundation for the Arts painting fellowships, in 1996 and 1990, and a travel grant to China from Arts International in 1994. She has taught at Princeton University, Bard College, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Art Department at The State University of New York at New Paltz.
Geraldine DeLuca is a contemplative practice fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind and the American Council of Learned Societies for 2005-2006. With her colleague David Forbes, she has created a pilot program in Contemplative Practices at Brooklyn College, where she is a professor of English. She currently teaches courses on theories and practice of teaching writing; Italian-American literature; and a new course in Literature and Contemplation, which has a contemplative practice component. She co-edited Dialogue on Writing, an anthology of essays about writing, and she founded and for 15 years co-edited The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins UP). She has published many essays on children's literature, along with poetry and personal narratives. She is working on a book called Mindful Classrooms, about what yoga, meditation, and alternative schools have taught her about teaching and learning.
David Forbes is a contemplative practice fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind and the American Council of Learned Societies for 2005-2006. He is an associate professor in the School of Education at Brooklyn College/CUNY and is program head of the school counseling program. He is also the author of Boyz 2 Buddhas: Counseling Urban High School Male Athletes in the Zone (2004). David has introduced mindfulness practices to school counselors, teachers, and students in a number of Brooklyn high schools and is currently teaching a course on Contemplative Urban School Counseling in the master's program at Brooklyn College.
Dr. Rick Repetti recently received his Ph.D in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate School in May, 2005 for his dissertation on the relationship between reflective consciousness and autonomy. Rick teaches philosophy at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, where he was just appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Philosophy & Political Science, to commence this year. Rick has been practicing mindfulness meditation and yoga for over three decades, and has taught many classes, courses, and workshops on both in various settings throughout the city for several years, including wellness centers, community centers, and continuing education programs, and has seen clients as a yoga therapist. He also completed two years of post-graduate training at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training in NYC, holds a fourth degree black belt in Shotokan Karate, and serves as faculty advisor to several student groups, including the Kingsborough chapter of the Student World Assembly. Rick founded and convenes the Free Will Circle, an informal seminar devoted to discussion of issues relating to free will and responsibility, open to faculty and students at the CUNY Graduate School. He is a member of Contemplative Studies in the Classroom, a CUNY-wide faculty group devoted to integrating contemplative practices into the curriculum, and a member of the advisory board to the Kingsborough Center for Teaching and Learning.
Clifford Hill has held an endowed chair at Columbia University, the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Language and Education at Teachers College. He has also directed the Program in African Languages at the Institute of African Studies in the School of International and Public Affairs. He currently serves as a senior research fellow of the Institute of Urban and Minority Education and as an editor of the Teachers College Record. In recent years he has been both a teaching fellow and a member of the academic committee at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
He has been a research fellow at a number of institutions abroad such as the Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik in Nijmegen and the Institut Nationale de Recherches Pédagogiques in Paris. In this country, his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Arts, the National Institute of Education, the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the National Institute on Student Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies as well as by private foundations such as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. He has been invited to make presentations at universities and research institutions all over the world.
This broad range of research experience is reflected in his publication record. His sociolinguistic research on African languages and cultures has led to publications in such fields as oral culture, literacy studies, multilingualism, and bilingual education. In particular, he has published widely on ways in which the resources of oral culture can be used in language and literacy development. His psycholinguistic research on language, space, and time has been has been translated into various languages and published in academic journals and books in this country, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He has authored a number of books and articles that deal with language and literacy assessment, most notably Children and Reading Tests and From Testing to Assessment: English as an International Language. In addition, he has published poetry and literary stylistics, which often deal with contemplative themes.
Daniel Holland received a B.A. in literature from Oberlin College. Following his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, he completed a residency in clinical neuropsychology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Dan was formerly a Clinical Assistant Professor and the Director of the Brain Injury Program at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. He left that position to spend time in South Asia, exploring how disability impacts spiritual practice among monks in remote monasteries. Since 1999, Dan has been on the psychology faculty of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. In 2001, he was an ACLS Contemplative Practice Fellow, a fellowship that allowed him to develop an experiential course entitled "Contemplative Practice, Health Promotion, and Disability" that was particularly welcoming of students with disabilities or chronic illness. In 2002, Dan was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Eastern Europe, where he worked with disability activists.
Travel Information
(from the CUNY Graduate Center website)
In Manhattan, the Graduate Center, housed in the historic B. Altman building, is easy to find. (Information on how to get to Manhattan by major modes of transportation can be found at the Fodors.com website, which is continually updated to give you the latest fares.)
Located on Fifth Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets, the building is two blocks east of Penn Station, one block east of Herald Square, and two blocks west of the 33rd Street and Park Avenue station. The closest subway station, located at 34th Street and Avenue of the Americas, is served by the B, D, F, N, R, and Q trains. You may also view a dynamic map courtesy of Mapquest, or here for a nice map courtesy of Yahoo.
Penn Station is served at 7th Avenue by the 1, 2, 3, and 9 IRT trains, as well as the A, C, and E lines at the 8th Avenue station one block west. Detailed information on bus and subway transport in New York City can be found at the website of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
For further directions, please call the Graduate Center at 1-212-817-7000.