2009 Summer Session on Contemplative Curriculum Development:
Information for Participants
Complete Your Registration | Agenda | Check-In Schedule | Reading List | Faculty & Staff
Travel Information | Accommodations & Meals | Participants
August 9 - 14, 2009
Smith College, Northampton, MA
Complete Your Registration
Complete your registration in two steps:
1. Complete the short questionnaire below.
2. Pay the Summer Session fee. You will be automatically forwarded to the payment options page after you submit your questionnaire responses (or, click here to proceed directly to the payment page).
Agenda
Agenda as of 6-17-09 (.pdf file)
Check-In Schedule
Sunday, August 9th
2:00 - 5:00 Check-in & Welcome, Chapin House
5:00 - 5:30 Reception, Chapin House
5:30 - 7:00 Dinner, Lamont House Dining Room
7:00 - 9:00 Opening Circle: Introductions, Agenda Review, and Program Goals, Neilson Library, Neilson-Browsing Room
Reading List
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The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation
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Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
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Releasing the Creative Spirit
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Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry |
Love and Knowledge: Recovering the Heart of Learning through Contemplation |
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Selections from Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy and Contemplative Seeing |
2009 Faculty & Staff
Daniel Barbezat
Professor of Economics
Amherst College
A member of the Amherst faculty since 1988, Barbezat received B.A. degree in economics and philosophy from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign.
Carrie Bergman designs and manages the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society's websites, creates publications and e-newsletters, assists with event promotion, and generally serves as a "technology facilitator" for the Center. Carrie graduated from Dickinson College with degrees in Studio Art and Anthropology and subsequently worked for Dickinson's museum and art department. She began her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in 1996. In 1998, she began to incorporate mindfulness and visualization practices into her art-making processes. Influenced by these contemplative practices and a spiritual response to nature, she makes miniature landscape paintings and larger works depicting stories about relationships between people, animals, and other elements of nature. Her work has been shown at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, Hannah Clark in New York, and in local galleries near her home in Western Massachusetts.
Mirabai Bush
Mirabai Bush, Senior Fellow, was a co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and served as Executive Director until 2008. Under her direction, The Center developed its programs in education, law, business, and activism and its network of thousands of people integrating contemplative practice and perspective into their lives and work.
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, Findhorn, 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.
Michelle Francl is a professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, where she has been on the faculty for 23 years. She is currently co-directing the College's Emily Balch Seminars, a writing intensive program for all first year students. Her research interests are in quantum mechanics and she is currently working to untangle the structures of topologically intriguing molecules. This year she has a Contemplative Practices Fellowship and is exploring around the monastic foundations to the practices she uses in the classroom. She is an essayist and newspaper columnist on the side - writing about science, culture, and contemplative practices.
Bradford C. Grant is the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Sciences, and the Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Howard University. He is the former Chairperson and Endowed University Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture at Hampton University, Hampton, VA. He received his Master’s degree in Architecture with a focus on social and cultural factors from the University of California at Berkeley. A registered architect, Mr. Grant has extensive experience in housing and community design through his research, teaching and architecture practice as principal of the architecture firm AGWA Architects, Hampton, VA. His research on cultural environmental design practice can be found in his work titled “Accommodation, Resistance and Appropriation in African American Building,” in Craig Barton’s Sites of Memory (Princeton Press, 2000) and in the Directory of African American Architects/Survey of African American Architects, co authored by Dennis Mann (University of Cincinnati, 3rd edition released as web site).
Mr. Grant was the Director of Hampton University Department of Architecture Urban Institute, the community design center and a service learning arm of the University. As part of the Urban Institute, Mr. Grant had conducted many urban and community design studies including the North King Street Urban Corridor, Hampton, VA., the Monticello Street Corridor, Norfolk, VA., and the Poindexter Street Commercial Corridor in Chesapeake, VA. along with architecture design assistance work with the City of Virginia Beach’s office of Housing and Community Service. His community design work has earned him the Hampton Clean City Commission Award, a Proclamation of Appreciation from the City of Hampton, the Universal Design Education Award from Adaptive Environments, Boston and Award of Merit from the Virginia Downtown Development Association.
Professor Grant has served as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA 2001-2004) and was a member of the Board of the Hermitage Foundation, Museum and Slone Collections, Norfolk, VA. He is involved in research, practice and teaching of architecture accessibility and Universal Design, Fair Housing and cultural issues in architecture. He is currently working on or has completed several commissioned projects and planning assignments including the addition the Guiding Light Church, Portsmouth, VA, the Blair Middle School addition, Norfolk, VA and Arbor Music, a site specific environmental sculpture for the Botanical Gardens, Norfolk, VA.
Britta Hoelzel is a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in the lab of Sara Lazar. She is a Psychologist (Dipl.-Psych., Frankfurt University, Germany) and received her Ph.D. from Giessen University in Germany. Her work focuses on the effects of mindfulness meditation and yoga practice on the function and structure of the brain. Her main interests include the neural correlates of improvements in emotion regulation and well-being and the reduction of stress following meditation training.
Sunanda Markus has served as program coordinator for the Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society for 8 years. She also works as the Managing Director of Nights Publications Inc. in Montreal, Quebec.
Her non-profit experience includes serving on the boards of the Seva Foundation, Seva Service Society, the Insight Meditation Society, the Eyak Preservation Council, and the Learning Alliance. As a board member for Seva Foundation she served as chairperson for 3 years and was also an active member of the Seva Guatemala Project which supports integrated community development.
She took her first course in meditation in 1972 in India with the Theravadan Buddhist teacher Shri S.N. Goenka and has been a student of Vipassana meditation since then. She also studied bhakti yoga in India with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba and has been a student of yoga for fifteen years.
Beth Wadham joined the Center as Academic Associate to support the existing program and develop 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.
Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D 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.
Joanna (“Jody”) Ziegler, Ph.D is the Edward A. O’Rorke Professor in the Liberal Arts at Holy Cross College, where she chairs the Department of Visual Arts and teaches courses in art and architectural history. As the O’Rorke chair, she offers a faculty seminar on Ethics Across the Curriculum, with contemplative practices at the 'heart' of that teaching. She was the recipient of a Contemplative Practice Fellowship in 1998, which led to her book, written with philosopher Christopher A. Dustin, Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing (Palgrave, 2005).
David Zlotnick
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Professor of Law
Roger Williams University School of Law
After graduating from the Harvard Law School, cum laude, Associate Dean Zlotnick clerked for a federal appellate judge, worked as a white collar defense attorney, and served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. In 1995, he became the first Litigation Director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums ("FAMM"), and in 2002, he was selected to be a Soros Senior Justice Fellow to research federal judicial attitudes towards sentencing. Professor Zlotnick's work on sentencing issues has received coverage in a variety of media including; Rolling Stone, BBC Television, and The New York Times. He has also testified before the Judiciary Committees of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives and his articles on sentencing and other subjects appear in journals including the Colorado Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Washington & Lee Law Review, Arizona Law Review, and the Ohio State law Journal. Dean Zlotnick teaches Criminal Law & Procedure, Criminal Defense Clinic, and Trial Advocacy. In 2008, he was awarded a Contemplative Practice Fellowship by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and developed a course in trial advocacy that integrates mindfulness concepts in the hope of making the litigation process more humane for everyone involved.
Travel Information
How to get to Chapin House, Smith College:
By Car
From the South: Northampton is on Route I-91 in Massachusetts. Take Exit 18, and follow Route 5 north into the center of town. Turn left onto Route 9. Go straight through four traffic lights, turning left into Smith’s main entrance (College Lane) shortly after the fourth set. The first left, a campus roadway, leads to the central campus and Chapin House is on the right, across from the student center.
Parking permits will be distributed at registration. Short-term parking is available near the Admission Office on your right after turning into the main entrance off of Route 9 (College Lane).
From the North: From I-91 South, take Exit 20, and follow onto Route 5 south into the center of town. At the intersection of Route 5 and Route 9 (Main Street), turn right onto Route 9. Then follow the same directions as above from Route 9 to Chapin House.
From the East or West via the Massachusetts Turnpike: Northampton is on Route I-91 North (Mass Pike exit 4). Once on I-91, follow the directions above for visitors from the south.
By Air
The closest airport is Bradley International. It is served by most major airlines and is located about 40 miles south of Northampton near Hartford, Connecticut; the driving route to Northampton is a straight shot north on I-91. Flying into Bradley rather than to Boston’s Logan Airport gives you a shorter drive to Northampton and spares you city traffic congestion. Allow at least 2 - 2 ½ hours to leave Northampton for your return flight: it takes about 40-50 minutes to drive to the airport (car rental returns may add 30 minutes), which leaves you ample time for check-in. Bradley Airport is a small, efficient operation, but peak travel hours may delay your check-in.
Limousines, buses, and rental cars are available at the airport. Transportation to Smith College from the Hartford airport is also available from Seemo Shuttle, Valley Transporter or Michael’s Limousine Services.
Seemo Shuttle can be reached at 413-586-1120 or www.seemoshuttle.com. The cost for a 1-person trip to or from Bradley is $42; if 2 people make a reservation together, the cost is $74; every extra person is an additional $15.
Valley Transporter can be reached at (413) 253-1350, or from outside the 413 area code dial (800) 872-8752. Rates are approximately $50 each way. The transporter runs from Boston, but it's about $200; NYC is $275 including gratuity. www.valleytransporter.com
Michael’s Limousine Services can be reached at (413) 583-6392 or (800) 533-8470.
By Bus
Peter Pan, Greyhound and Vermont Transit serve the area. Most routes go to the main bus terminal in Springfield, where you can catch another bus to Northampton. Buses run almost hourly between Springfield and Northampton. Smith College is a 5-minute walk or a short taxi ride from the bus station; the taxi station is right next to the Northampton bus "depot". www.peterpanbus.com; www.greyhound.com; www.vermonttransit.com.
By Train
Amtrak - (800) 872-7245 - runs trains to Springfield from various locations. www.amtrak.com
From Springfield you can take a bus or get van service to Northampton from Valley Transporter. Valley Transporter requires advance reservations; call (413) 253-1350 or (800) 872-8752; www.valleytransporter.com
Accommodations & Meals
Participants will stay at Chapin House, a one-hundred-year-old (but recently renovated, and air-conditioned) house centrally located on campus. Chapin is across from the student center and overlooks the gardens of Lyman Plant House and Paradise Pond.
Chapin House by Kathleen Crowe ‘99
All rooms are singles, but in dormitory style bathrooms are shared. Each floor has one large bathroom; women and men will stay on different floors. Sheets and pillowcases are of the most basic variety, so if you prefer greater creature comforts, you may wish to bring something more familiar. There are coin-operated laundry facilities on the first floor. There is internet access in each room. Please bring an Ethernet cable to connect to the web. Wireless access is available in some locations including nearby Neilson Library and the Student Center.
Meals from dinner on Sunday, August 9 through breakfast on Friday, August 14 will be at Lamont House on Prospect Street across from John M. Greene Hall.
Lamont House by Kathleen Crowe ‘99
A map of Smith College is available at www.smith.edu/map/.
Participants
- Fr. C. Paul Anto | Social Work | Diocesan Youth Commission, Nagaland, India
- Marian Arkin | English | LaGuardia Community College
- Lori Barkley | Anthropology, Peace Studies | Selkirk College
- John Eric Baugher | Sociology | University of Southern Maine
- Colleen Bell | Liberal Arts | Hamline University
- Jeff Bens | English | Manhattanville College
- Doryjane Birrer | English | The College of Charleston
- Anne Bruce | Nursing | University of Victoria
- Kathryn Byrnes | Education | Bowdoin College
- Karen Cardozo | Interdisciplinary Honors | University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Jane Compson | Philosophy, Religion | University of Central Florida
- Melissa Goldthwaite | Rhetoric and Composition | Saint Joseph’s University
- Katja Hahn d’Errico | Education | University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Wendy Hamblett | Philosophy | North Carolina A&T State University
- Janet Higgins | Book Arts and Letterpress Printing | Middle Tennessee University
- Renee Hill | Philosophy | Virginia State University
- Wesley Hogan | History | Virginia State University
- Jessica Lyn | Hooper Literature, Reading, Composition | Gavilan College
- Gesa Kirsch | Rhetoric and Writing | Bentley University
- Keith Kroll | Composition, Literature | Kalamazoo Community College
- Elizabeth Lund | Chemistry | Selkirk College
- Jane McCool | Nursing | Northeastern University
- Christian McEwen | Creative Non-Fiction Writing | Williams College
- Almeda Glenn Miller | Writing, English | Selkirk College
- Nicole Nemec | Interdisciplinary Honors | University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Rebecca Ossorio | Education, Yoga | University at Albany, Vassar College
- Linda Paul | Philosophy | Wilkes University
- Layli Philips | Women’s Studies | Georgia State University
- Robbie Pinter | English | Belmont University
- Michele Piso | Critical Thinking & Faculty Development | LaGuardia Community College
- Jill Schneiderman | Earth Science, Environmental Studies | Vassar College
- Mark Thurston | Ctr. for Consciousness & Transformation | George Mason University
- Amy Winans | English | Susquehanna University
- Rita Wong | Critical and Cultural Studies | Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design
- Angela Woodward | English | Edgewood College
If you have any questions, please contact Beth Wadham, Academic Program Associate, at beth@contemplativemind.org or at 413-582-0071.