Contemplative Education CenterStage: Training the Mindful Performer

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, contemplative education/studies courses, concentrations, and initiatives have emerged in the academy. Although there has been significant discussion of postsecondary courses and programs that have integrated contemplative views and practices in the literature, there have been few studies of contemplative curricula and pedagogy in higher education. Additionally, there have been even fewer inquiries of the influence of contemplative education on performing arts training within conservatories and college and university departments. The aim of this qualitative study was two-fold: (1) to describe, interpret, and appraise the impact of contemplative education on the curricula of an interdisciplinary conservatory level performing arts program, MFA Contemporary Performance, at Naropa University; and (2) to disclose, compare, and analyze MFA student perceptions of the influence of contemplative education on their professional and personal development. The following questions guided this study: (1) How do faculty and students characterize contemplative education within the MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance Program? (2) How does contemplative education impact the intended and operational curricula of courses within the MFA Contemporary Performance Program? (3) How do graduate students perceive the effects of contemplative education, offered by the MFA Contemporary Performance Program, on the development of their communication abilities, presence-in-performance, sociolinguistic perspectives, and aesthetic perspectives? Based on the research methodology of educational criticism and connoisseurship, this investigation provides a vivid description and interpretation of the intended and operational curricula of three core courses within the MFA program. These curricula were examined through five dimensions: intentional, curricular, pedagogical, structural, and evaluative. In order to shape our understanding of the contemplative and performative nature of the curricula, the significant and subtle qualities of the courses were further captured by preparation, context-building, reflective, showing, and closing conventions. Since the courses were grounded in postmodern view, they were evaluated according to Doll's criteria of richness, recursion, relations, and rigor for the evaluation of postmodern curricula. MFA first- and second-year students primarily characterized contemplative education as body/mind training for performance and personal development, sitting meditation, and cultivation of mindfulness and awareness. Student perceptions of the impact of contemplative education on the development of their communication abilities, presence-in-performance, sociolinguistic perspectives, and aesthetic perspectives, throughout the course of their two-year training, are presented in a dimensional analysis. The research reveals eight different themes that intersect the three core curricula and interviews with MFA students and faculty. These thematics include inclusivity, nowness, silence, improvisation, goodness, heart, training, and space. The beginning letter of each theme combines to form the acronym, insights. The framework of insights connects and illuminates the most potent aspects of MFA Contemporary Performance values and training.

Realizing Sustained School Improvement

Author: Jeanice Kerr Swift Title: REALIZING SUSTAINED SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT Advisor: Dr. Kent Seidel and Dr. Linda Brookhart Degree Date: June, 2011 Developing effective methods for improving America's schools is dependent upon coordinated work of practitioners and researchers. School improvement proves a complicated, confusing and most often troubled process; one characterized by the unprecedented challenges of dramatic societal shift, increasing levels of student need, and ongoing involvement from political and governmental influences. The drive to discover better ways to consistently improve schools is fueled by urgency for dramatic results. This research examines both the macro and the micro levels of the school improvement process and illuminates the need for an intentional new way of thinking and leading. At the macro level, the study examined the need for implementing a systems approach to improve America's schools. The study explored a single school's improvement journey. This work aligned individual and group perceptions of staff members alongside student achievement outcome data framed against the findings in the literature. The study rendered themes from within the reflected experiences of participant educators; the work pointed to the need for an improved social technology, the importance of teams, and shared leadership in the orchestrating of successful school improvement processes, particularly the essential roles of collective listening, learning, and leading to realize transformed outcomes for schools.

"i Went To The Woods Because I Wished To Live Deliberately": How A College-Level Academic Course Can Influence A Lifetime

This study, using the portraiture methodology, provides an analysis of the lifelong significance of an undergraduate program that integrates literature with an outdoor experiential platform. With limited research on long-term effects of an academic outdoor experiential course on one's life, there is space to wonder about the prospect and nature of the long-term significance of an academic course that may offer technical skill, intrapersonal and interpersonal development, and also the delivery of subject matter related to a traditional or mainstream academic area of study. Utilizing an academic skills-oriented lens as well as a character strengths lens, portraits were crafted of four former participants of the University of Michigan's New England Literature Program (NELP) to shed light on the long-term influence of this type of course, crucial participant characteristics that contribute to the program's impact, and specific components of the program that are particularly integral to the course's efficacy. Since 1975, each spring term a small contingent of students and educators has lived in the woods in the New England region as a community of learners, artists and explorers. NELP is an exemplar of a longstanding undergraduate academic English course that integrates the literature of New England writers, exploratory writing and student experiences relating to regional literature and the land. Emergent themes of this course's long-term influence on former participants include increased collaborative skills, increased self-confidence and self-knowledge, a reinforcement of lifelong relationships with the outdoors, and nurtured creativity. For participants to reap benefit from this course, it was important for them to enter with maturity to conduct themselves with openness to new experiences, relationships, and extensive reflection. Findings relating to the integral components of such a program include that of being place-based, oriented towards process, and being an intentional, collaborative community.

Difference Blindness vs. Bias Awareness: Why Law Firms with the Best of Intentions Have Failed to Create Diverse Partnerships

This Article uses the example of BigLaw firms to explore the challenges that many elite organizations face in providing equal opportunity to their workers. Despite good intentions and the investment of significant resources, large law firms have been consistently unable to deliver diverse partnership structures - especially in more senior positions of power. Building on implicit and institutional bias scholarship and on successful approaches described in the organizational behavior literature, we argue that a significant barrier to systemic diversity at the law firm partnership level has been, paradoxically, the insistence on difference blindness standards that seek to evaluate each person on their individual merit. While powerful in dismantling intentional discrimination, these standards rely on an assumption that lawyers are, and have the power to act as, atomistic individuals - a dangerous assumption that has been disproven consistently by the literature establishing the continuing and powerful influence of implicit and institutional bias. Accordingly, difference blindness, which holds all lawyers accountable to seemingly neutral standards, disproportionately disadvantages diverse populations and normalizes the dominance of certain actors - here, white men - by creating the illusion that success or failure depends upon individual rather than structural constraints. In contrast, we argue that a bias awareness approach that encourages identity awareness and a relational framework is a more promising way to promote equality, equity, and inclusion.

Citation Methodologies in Eusebius’ Historia ecclesiastica and Other Ancient Historiography

This dissertation examines ancient historiographic citation methodologies in light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dichotomy between polyphony and monologization. In particular, this dissertation argues that Eusebius of Caesarea’s Historia ecclesiastica (HE) abandons the monologic citation methodology typical of previous Greek and Hellenistic historiography and introduces a polyphonic citation methodology that influences subsequent late-ancient Christian historiography to varying degrees. Whereas Pre-Eusebian Greek and Hellenistic historiographers typically use citations to support the single authorial consciousness of the historiographer, Eusebius uses citations to counterbalance his own shortcomings as a witness to past events. Eusebius allows his citations to retain their own voice, even when they conflict with his. The result is a narrative that transcends the point of view of any single individual and makes multiple witnesses, including the narrator, available to the reader. Post-Eusebian late-ancient Christian historiographers exhibit the influence of Eusebius’ innovation, but they are not as intentional as Eusebius in their use of citation methodologies. Many subsequent Christian historiographers use both monologic and polyphonic citation methodologies. Their tendency to follow Eusebius’ practice of citing numerous lengthy citations sometimes emphasizes points of view that oppose the author’s point of view. When an opposing viewpoint surfaces in enough citations, a polyphonic citation methodology emerges. The reader holds the two different narrative strands in tension as the author continues to give voice to opposing viewpoints. After illustrating the citation methodologies with passages from numerous Greek, Hellenistic, and late ancient Christian historiographers, this dissertation concludes with a short computational analysis that uses natural language processing to reveal some broad trends that highlight the previous findings and suggest a possibility for future research.

Brewing Behind Barbed Wire: An Archaeology of Saké at Amache

After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the west coast of the United States were forcibly removed from their home communities. These people were designated as "evacuees" by the U.S. Government and were incarcerated within a network of federal government facilities the largest of which were internment centers operated by the War Relocation Authority that held mostly U.S. citizens. The Granada Relocation Center (Amache) was the smallest of these internment centers. The presence of saké at Amache indicates that Japanese Americans continued important practices of daily life despite restrictions under confinement. This thesis investigates the practices of saké production and consumption at Amache and examines the importance of these practices in Japanese American daily life. In order to understand these practices, this research draws on multiple lines of evidence. This includes investigations of an assemblage of the material culture associated with saké, research into the history and methods of production and consumption, collection of oral histories, review of archival data, and the application of practice theory. These data provide insight into practices that are not well understood by researchers of Japanese American internment due to their illicit nature. This research endeavors to characterize how saké was produced and used at Amache and provides a way to understand how cultural practices maintain aspects of everyday life in ways that may have little to do with intentional resistance.