Annual ACMHE Conference

Radicalizing Contemplative Education:
Compassion, Intersectionality, and Justice in Challenging Times

The 9th Annual ACMHE Conference
at 1440 Multiversity, Scotts Valley, CA

October 27 – 29, 2017
Early Bird Rate: $400 / Regular Rate: $450
ACMHE members receive a $50 discount on main conference registration. Rates do not include accommodations. Financial aid available.

This year’s conference marks the 20th anniversary of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Organized around three main tracks — teaching and learning, student affairs, and leadership — the conference will celebrate, and take stock of, the work of CMind over the last two decades, while presenting cutting edge ways contemplative approaches to inquiry and learning can further justice and compassion on college and university campuses and beyond. Through keynote presentations, interactive sessions, and contemplative workshops, participants will explore how diverse contemplative pedagogies and practices can support transformations on multiple levels – self, classroom, organization, community – and invite creative, unconventional approaches to how we imagine and seek to address the many challenges of the 21st century.

Presentations might address questions such as:

• How do contemplative practices deepen our capacities to bear witness to each other’s lived experiences and work together to build more compassionate and just communities?
• How do contemplative approaches help us understand privilege and empower us to  work to transform oppressive structures and processes of exclusion on campus and beyond?
• How can a contemplative social justice pedagogy facilitate a deep unlearning of dehumanizing ideologies and practices, a healing from the trauma of injustice, and a deeper ability to sit with the discomfort of that process in order to cultivate more liberatory ways of being with one another?
• How can student affairs professionals employ contemplative approaches to foster deep inquiry and to cultivate personal transformation, as well as social, emotional and inner life competencies necessary for students to face contemporary societal challenges?
• How can forms of leadership and activism be deepened and strengthened by integrating contemplative pedagogies, particularly in social justice work?
• With the evident exponential increase of technology in our lives, what role can contemplative practices play in helping our society develop more harmonious patterns of consumption that prioritize individual and collective wellbeing?

The conference will take place on the 75-acre campus of the 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County, California. The setting for the conference, with uplifting gathering spaces and quiet spots for contemplation both indoors and out, provides an ideal context for engaging in dialogue about the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, while exploring and practicing new visions for integrating contemplative practices and approaches to further compassion and justice in higher education and beyond. In bringing together diverse networks of teachers, scholars, administrators, practitioners, students, and community activists, the conference will be a landmark event in furthering a contemplative, socially just educational vision.

 

About ACMHE Conferences
The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE) is an initiative of CMind, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. ACMHE has convened conferences since 2009. The ACMHE conference is an annual interdisciplinary forum for sharing scholarship, practices, and research on contemplative methods in higher education, with an emphasis on fostering compassionate social change. The ACMHE conference schedule emphasizes concurrent sessions led by scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners that demonstrate and investigate how contemplative practices are being used in higher education.

 

 

 

Past Conference Programs

 

2014 Conference:
Intention, Method, and Evaluation (.pdf)

 

2013 Conference:
Integrity of Practice: A Contemplative Vision for Higher Education (.pdf)

 

2012 Conference:
Contemplative Approaches in the Diverse Academic Community: Inquiry, Connection, Creativity, and Insight (.pdf)

 

2011 Conference:
The Contemplative Campus (.pdf)

 

2010 Conference:
The Contemplative Academy (.pdf)

 

2009 Conference:
The Contemplative Heart of Higher Education (.pdf)

 

2012 ACMHE Conference Keynote

Contemplating Race, Law, and Justice: Some Notes on Pedagogy for Changing the World
Rhonda V. Magee, Chair of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of San Francisco