Instructor: Ivette Vargas-O’Bryan
Description: In this project-based course, students will examine mindfulness as a critical life skill and its potential for applications in the workplace or a future career. Backed by research, mindfulness is the practice of actively cultivating awareness of one’s mental, emotional, and physical environments in order to be present, engaged, and compassionate whether to one’s negative emotions, others, or to the natural world. Adapted in American society to appeal to a wide variety of groups (police officers and firefighters, doctors and nurses, athletes and business people) and incorporated into major companies like Google, Aetna, and Nike, mindfulness practices have helped with work satisfaction and stress. In this course, students will engage in mindfulness from Buddhism meditation and applied in secular environments, yoga, art, and poetry; examine neuroscientific research; and explore how these skills can be applied to a career goal by developing and presenting a project on mindfulness applications in a workplace. Class meetings take place in person and virtually including a fieldtrip to a Hindu temple in Frisco and other areas. Workshop sessions and lectures include Harvard Med School graduate and professor Dr. Ronald Epstein, co-director of a mindfulness program for doctors at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; faculty from the Texas Christian University CALM Studies Group; and Laura Wessinger, the director of the Mindful Project, a program which trains business professionals and others like firefighters (the latter sponsors the Mindful Schools program initiatives at schools nationwide).
Meeting Dates: 01/02/2024 – 01/24/2024
Meeting Times: M-F 01:00PM – 05:00PM
Meeting Location: Ida Green 112
Section Requisites: Instuctor permission required via email. Exact times vary depending on sessions, some evening sessions on Zoom.
Course Fee: $350
Out-of-Pocket Expenses: $26