Through its local, national and international network of colleagues, CILA is already at the crossroads of the movement for the transformation of higher education to include contemplative, spiritual and integrative insights and practices. We seek to be recognized as the foremost center convening and cultivating those concerned for the future of higher education.

By undertaking a vigorous program of in-house research and through collaboration with visiting scholars and practitioners, CILA will develop insights, practices and human capacities important to the future development of higher education. These insights and practices will be vetted in Five College classes and campus communities, and modeled within our own affiliated non-residential school of graduate studies.

Through grant programs we will work with a diverse but select group of existing colleges and universities, as well as departments and programs, to effect transformational change of these institutions by including contemplative, spiritual and integrative dimensions in learning, research and action.

CILA will address the interests and aspirations of individual teachers, scholars, staff, students and administrators through an extensive range of conferences, workshops, publications and retreats, many of which will take place in a newly constructed Retreat Center. This Retreat Center will be designed in an aesthetic reflective of CILA’s mission and the people and programs it will house, and will be a model for ecologically sound design and construction methods.

CILA

CILA as a non-profit organization is situated in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, where the Five Colleges comprised of Amherst, Hampshire, Mt Holyoke and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst are located. It was from this milieu that CILA emerged from the interests of faculty, staff, students and administrators. Hampshire College, which has a national reputation for creating new models of education, will act as the fiscal agent. Hampshire College is developing a Cultural Village of diverse NPOs located on its property. CILA has been invited to build and locate its facilities there as well, which will insure a close working relationship with Hampshire and the other four Colleges. As CILA develops we expect to incorporate as our own NPO, while retaining our location at Hampshire College and our relationships to the Five Colleges. A more detailed description of the Five Colleges, including Hampshire College, is provided in Appendix II.

Projects

To achieve its goals CILA will:

1) Establish a leading center for renewal, research and transformational learning among the Five Colleges.

2) Establish a Research Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness, and partner with the Owen Barfield School of Graduate Studies.

3) Establish a Distinguished Visiting Scholars and Practitioners Program.

4) Direct a grant program for whole institutional change in existing colleges and universities.

5) Direct a grant program for departmental and program units to incorporate contemplative, spiritual, and integrative practices, or to restructure themselves around these themes.

6) Run a comprehensive set of conferences, workshops and other gatherings for individuals.

7) Design and construct suitable facilities, including a Retreat Center, to house these diverse activities.

Financial Projections

CILA is seeking a total grant of nearly $100 million dollars:

n $24.5 million dollars will be used to endow part of the essential operating expenses for CILA.

n $20 million dollars will be used to help endow two core partners: a non-residential graduate school and a research institute.

n $32.5 million dollars will be used to endow the two distinguished visiting scholar positions. and a full visiting scholars/practitioners program.

n $6.5 million dollars is for direct support of transformational learning processes in existing colleges, universities, departmental units and individuals in higher education.

n $9.8 million dollars for the design, construction and maintenance of facilities, including the CILA offices and a Retreat Center.

n $6.5 million dollars (7%) for overhead in administration of the grant by the fiscal agent, Hampshire College.

V. An Introduction to the Non-Profit Organization

We must be the change we want to see in the world.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi

THE FIVE COLLEGES

CILA is situated within the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts where the Five Colleges, comprised of Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are located. CILA emerged largely from the interests of Five College faculty, staff, administrators, together with other national collaborators, who were deeply concerned with the relationship between higher education, contemplative practice, spirituality, and diverse ways of knowing, living and working. CILA will continue to develop its strong relationship with the Five Colleges, which includes a varied set of educational institutions: public and private; traditional and experimental; and liberal arts colleges and a large comprehensive, research, land-grant university.

The Five Colleges provide an ideal “laboratory” for developing our ideas and activities before taking them into the larger public arena. We see this rich academic context as strengthening our work through our linkages to many faculty and staff at the colleges and the university. Several of CILA’s founders who are faculty members in the Five Colleges started a Five College Faculty Seminar on New Epistemologies and Contemplation. Seminar participants across the Five Colleges are integrating CILA-type activities into their classrooms, research and campus life activities. In addition, CILA founders have been key organizers in the Five Colleges, creating a range of seminars, workshops and networking opportunities for the larger community. See the section on Governance and Administrative Structure for descriptions of the CILA founders.

Should we receive this grant, we will pursue the possibility of a more formal relationship with Five Colleges Inc., a consortium of the Five College Presidents, academic deans, faculty and staff that shares coursework, programming and vision for education in the Five College area. A conversation has already begun between CILA founders and the Presidents of the Five Colleges. For more information on the Five Colleges see Appendix II and the referenced website.

HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE

Hampshire College currently acts as the fiscal agent for CILA. It is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. As CILA develops, we expect to incorporate as our own independent non-profit, tax-exempt organization, while retaining our close relationship to Hampshire College and to the other colleges in the Pioneer Valley.

Hampshire College was planned at the end of the 1950’s by the directors of Amherst, Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and opened in 1970. Its mission is to foster in higher education a new way of looking at knowledge – to move beyond disciplines and to begin where students begin: with questions and problems. While it promotes interdisciplinary work, more profoundly it is an international model for a holistic approach to education, to looking at problems, and to the human experience. It provides, perhaps, the perfect partner for CILA, which is also dedicated to developing a holistic education. What CILA brings to Hampshire is an approach that develops the largely unexamined spiritual dimensions of knowledge and action, so as to cultivate a now missing piece of the holistic learning puzzle.

In addition, Hampshire College is home to a number of related programs -- from those that focus on traditional academic scholarship, to activism and community service programs, to developmental programs focusing on living together well. It is the home for the Five College Peace and World Securities Program that offers conflict resolution programs in tense international settings, and that does so in cooperation with the School of International Training (SIT) and the Karuna Peace Studies Center. Hampshire College offered the first undergraduate Cognitive Science Program in the United States, and still produces the standard undergraduate text for that field. It has begun a major effort to explore how its education can be more intentional in developing the capacity of its students to be enriched by their diversity and to deal with conflict constructively – an effort to enhance the capacity of students to live together well. Hampshire has created a Cultural Village that hosts other not-for-profits organizations such as the Institute for Study of Interdisciplinary Science (ISIS), the National Yiddish Book Center, and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. In short, the college offers a strong range of complementary programs that make it an ideal partner in this effort. And CILA can enrich these diverse initiatives by illuminating the potential for spiritually-based social activism, conflict resolution, social pluralism, and interpersonal relations.

As a fiscal agent, as a physical environment, and as an intellectual milieu, we believe that Hampshire College (together with the other four Colleges) makes an ideal setting for the Center for Integrative Learning and Action. For more information on Hampshire College, see Appendix II, and its President, Gregory Prince, see Appendix IX and the referenced website.

FACILITIES

We plan to construct two buildings to house the offices, meeting rooms and the myriad programs of CILA: an Office Building and a Retreat Center. Both structures will be constructed to embody and reflect our principles. They will be designed and built using ecologically-sound materials that blend with and highlight the surrounding environment, and that best allow for collaborative working and engagement. The Retreat Center will be the first one in the nation designed exclusively for the higher education community for renewal and to explore the contemplative and spiritual dimensions of learning, research and action. The office building will be located at Hampshire College; the best location for the contemplative Retreat Center is being considered. Both structures are needed if CILA and its partners are to lead and convene the emerging movement toward more integrative learning and action.

CORE PARTNERSHIPS

CILA will encompass and house two new institutions as a means of developing and exemplifying our vision and guiding principles. These institutions are:

n The Owen Barfield School of Graduate Studies

n The New England Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness

These two entities will have a unique relationship to CILA as Core Partners and will represent two CILA efforts to exemplify and embody our principles. Partial support is sought for these two entities as an integral part of this proposal. The Barfield School is a new academic institution that will serve an international student and faculty community who embrace CILA’s guiding principles. We envision CILA and the Barfield School together as growing to become a large and vigorous force for the renewal of higher education, based on contemplative, spiritual and integrative principles. The New England Center for the Study of Learning and Consciousness will offer us an on-site Research Institute, which will assist in developing the ideas and initiatives that will then be shared with established institutions of higher education, research and service. It will be the primary vehicle for research at CILA.

The Barfield School

The Owen Barfield School of Graduate Studies is a new venture headed by one of CILA’s founders, which will offer a non-residential course of study at the masters and doctoral level. It seeks to combine a high level of scholarly mastery in a field of study with meditative and artistic practice, a commitment to ethical involvement in life, and a spiritual understanding of our world. Already a distinguished faculty of twenty-five accomplished scholars, scientists and artists have agreed to teach and mentor Barfield students during short-term residencies and using distance-learning technologies. With sufficient funding, the scope of the Barfield School’s programs could quickly be accelerated to provide a truly integrative, transformative learning experience connecting students and faculty globally for work that addresses the whole human being, body, mind and spirit.

Incorporated in Massachusetts as a non-profit institution of higher education, it is currently seeking approval and accreditation for its programs. Appendix III contains a fuller treatment of the Barfield School’s vision, staffing and curriculum. While retaining its independent corporate status, the Barfield School would co-locate with the Center for Integrative Learning and Action, sharing infrastructure and facilities. We anticipate that this arrangement will create a synergy beneficial to both organizations. For a more detailed description of the Barfield School, see Appendix III.

The New England Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness

By extending our modalities and methods of inquiry, important advances can be made in research and learning, especially in those areas concerned with consciousness itself. The research of individuals such as neuroscientist Francisco Varela (CNRS Paris), philosopher Evan Thompson (York University), astrophysicist Piet Hut (Princeton Institute for Advanced Study), neuroscientist Richard Davidson (University of Wisconsin), educational theorist Howard Gardner (Harvard), psychologist Robert Keagan (Harvard) and Buddhist Scholar, B. Alan Wallace (UCSB) exemplify the significant steps that have been made in the study of learning and consciousness from diverse perspectives.

As our second core partner, CILA proposes to found the New England Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness. We have had preliminary conversations with Dr. John Pearson of the Sarnoff Research Laboratories about becoming director of this research facility. Dr. Pearson has degrees in physics, neuroscience and contemplation. He has worked with the Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, and also has significant experience in managing a research group while at Sarnoff Research Laboratories. Background information and his proposal for the Institute are in Appendix IV. Other individuals who might play important roles at the institute include Urs Pohlman, M.D., Ph.D. neurologist and philosopher now at Duke University, and B. Alan Wallace Ph.D., one of America’s foremost scholar-practitioners on Tibetan Buddhism and meditative practice. The research center would collaborate closely with other colleagues and centers who are pursuing similar or related themes across the country and world.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

As important as integrative innovation is in classrooms and in research, it is equally important that the organizational forms and practices of higher education themselves be in alignment with the values and principles of integrative learning and action. David K. Scott has been a leading figure in the call for re-imagining the academy. Building on his experience and connections, CILA will establish a formal program office for organizational development. We will have a small resident staff and will contract with leading consultants in organizational development with whom we have close relationships and who share CILA’s values and principles. These include: Susan Aubrey, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Oakland University, and an expert on organizational transformation; Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer of the Society of Learning Organization (SOL); Meg Wheatley of the Berkana Institute; Mirabai Bush of the Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society; and Peter Lawrence of the Education as Transformation Project (EasT). They have been part of the envisioning and development of CILA since its inception and will provide invaluable assistance in translating our vision into reality in the seven universities who will receive grants from CILA, as well as in other academic institutions who express interest in our vision and program and are ready to make systemic and structural changes on a smaller scale. Important ideas on Integrative Universities were developed by Susan Awbrey, Peter Senge and David K. Scott and others in 1999 in a Proposal to the Kellogg Foundation, called Learning to Change: A Proposal to Create the Center for Integrative Universities.

EMERGING PARTNERS

We fully recognize that CILA has no monopoly on innovations in the area of integrative learning and action. We therefore intend to actively develop a network of organizations and resources around the globe where insights and best practices can be shared. Through conferences, workshops, seminars, publications and the web, we will bring the wisdom of many individuals and institutions to the emerging community interested in contemplative, spiritual and integrative learning, research and action. Further, in the coming years we plan to partner with one or more organizations to create initiatives that model and embody the action component of the learning, research and action triad, joining the Barfield School (learning) and the Research Institute as core partners in the CILA vision, mission and infrastructure. As previously stated, we are well-positioned for this emerging partnership given the auspicious location of CILA in Hampshire College’s Cultural Village.

VI. Past and Current Programs and Achievements

Over the past four years, significant program activities and achievements have laid the essential groundwork necessary for the founding of CILA. They are:

Conference: Addressing Spirituality In Mainstream Higher Education

In June of 2000, Chancellor David K. Scott hosted a conference at the University of Massachusetts entitled: “Going Public With Spirituality in Higher Education and the Workplace”. It must be noted that this conference was second in a series of conferences addressing spirituality in mainstream higher education; the first conference was hosted by Wellesley College and the Education as Transformation Project (EasT) in 1998. David K. Scott and other CILA founders attended this groundbreaking conference at Wellesley, and decided to host a second one at University of Massachusetts/Amherst (UMass) in 2000 in partnership with EasT.

Achievements:

1. The conference brought together 350 people from across the country to explore spirituality in higher education, including its role in the workplace. Since that conference, voices expressing the desire for a different future--a healthier, wiser, more just, caring and integrative vision of higher education--have been coming together throughout the Five Colleges of Western Massachusetts, and they form the basis of CILA.

2. In September of 2000, as an outgrowth of the Conference, UMass/Amherst, through the UMass Foundation, provided office space, computers and other office equipment and technology, and partially funded two positions to develop programs and relationships as follow-up to the conference. In January of 2001, the Nathan Cummings Foundation provided a grant to Five Colleges, Inc. to advance this work in the Five Colleges. The two part-time coordinators, Phyllis Robinson and Diane Dana, comprised a Core Working Group to lay the groundwork for CILA. Members of this working group include David Scott, Arthur Zajonc and Frederique Apffel-Marglin (mentioned below) and Katja Hahn D’Errico. Biographies on these Core Group members is found in the section on CILA Governance and Administration Structure. Two graduate student members of the Core Group have been pivotal in CILA’s creation: Vachel Miller and Fan Yihong.

Seminar: The Five College Faculty Seminar on New Epistemologies and Contemplation

The Five College Faculty Seminar on New Epistemologies and Contemplation was conceived by Smith College Professor of Anthropology, Frederique Apffel-Marglin, and Amherst College Professor of Physics, Arthur Zajonc, on the heels of the June, 2000 conference. This ongoing Seminar currently involves 55 faculty from different disciplines throughout the Five Colleges in bi-monthly study and dialogue on the relationship between contemplative practice and the emergence of other ways of knowing. Inspired by Parker Palmer’s insight that “every epistemology becomes an ethic, every way of knowing becomes a way of living,” the seminar invites faculty to examine their own teaching practices, modes of inquiry, scholarship, and the beliefs that they hold about learning. During a Seminar session, an Academic Dean at Smith College noted:

We spend all of our time developing cognition and ways of negotiating in an academic world that is not “life-giving”. We empower structures of archaic ways of knowing that do not allow the other capacities to develop, to inform, to awaken us out of our slumber. When we do allow these other capacities, we are counted on the fringe or edge because it is fearful for others to know that perhaps the rational way of knowing is not the only way. In challenging the hierarchical ways of knowing, we threaten the canons of the academy, yet the academy cries out for these other ways of knowing.

Achievements:

1. There are currently over 20 faculty in the Five Colleges using contemplation in their classrooms in a wide range of disciplines, including English Literature, Microbiology, Physics, Art, Music, Dance, Theatre, Psychology, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Astronomy, Plant and Soil Sciences, Ecology, Education, and Athletics. CILA has developed a deep and abiding relationships with these faculty members and they have expressed a desire for ongoing connection. Several of these faculty has provided a proposal this year to the head of their department for a transformation along the lines of CILA’s principles.

2. Since the formation of the faculty seminar, the CILA office developed an in-depth relationship with Mirabai Bush and the Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society located in Northampton, MA (in close proximity to the Five Colleges – see Appendix V for more information). This organization is working in different sectors of society, including higher education, to bring contemplative practices into these domains for enhancing clarity of mind, integration of self, and more responsible action. Their Contemplative Fellowship Program for Higher Education, administered by the American Council of Learned Societies, has enabled hundreds of faculty from across the country to integrate contemplative study and practice into their classrooms, including several from the Five Colleges who have helped to promote these themes on their campuses.

The Five College Series on the Contemplative Mind and Higher Education

Through the aforementioned grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Core Working Group designed and hosted this Series to give opportunities to the larger Five College community to engage in explorations of the contemplative mind.

Achievements:

1. Over 1000 people from the Five Colleges participated in the events in this series:

n 850 students, faculty and staff participated in Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s public talk on March 14;

n 350 staff and faculty participated in a three-hour workshop with him the following day;

n 55 faculty engaged in dialogue with him following the workshop;

n 800 people attended the public address by Dr. Goleman in November, 2001, including close to 200 students from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass who attended as part of a class assignment;

n 40 faculty and staff participated in a 3-day mindfulness meditation retreat with Dr. Kabat-Zinn in January, 2002.

The events in this series have catalyzed an enormous outpouring of support within the Five Colleges, across all areas of the campuses. Numerous administrators, faculty and staff members throughout the Five Colleges, directors of Mental Heath, associate directors of counseling services, the Episcopal Chaplain at the University of Massachusetts; the Dean of the School of Social Work at Smith College, the Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at Mt. Holyoke College, the President of Smith College and the Dean of Students at Mt. Holyoke, had all been exploring these themes and welcomed the opportunity to come together through the Series for more in-depth explorations.

2. Ongoing mindfulness meditation sessions have been offered to Five College staff and faculty three days a week since the first event with Dr. Kabat-Zinn in March. These sessions offer opportunities for the Five College community to develop and maintain contemplative practices as part of their work day.

Program: Spirituality and the Workplace

Spirituality and the Workplace. Following the 2000 Conference, the two CILA coordinators began to convene staff members at UMass to regularly explore the spiritual dimensions of work.

Achievements:

1. An initiative called “Spirit at Work” has convened administrators and staff to explore how to engage the mind, heart, body and spirit in their departments on campus. Members of this dialogue group include the directors of Mental Health Services, the Employee Assistance Program, and Student Housing; the senior manager of Human Resources for Auxiliary Services; Manager of Facilities and Dining Services; Associate Director of the Undergraduate Advising Center; and both the Training Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator of the Training Program in Human Resources. This group would continue to meet and CILA staff would support its membership.

2. Employees at UMass are beginning to introduce contemplative practices into their workplaces as a means for stress reduction and employee renewal. The Director of Mental Health and the 22 staff counselors at UMass invited Phyllis Robinson in to their office to lead bi-weekly mindfulness meditation sessions as part of their regular staff meetings during the 2001-2002 school year.

3. Mindfulness meditation for students: Following the inception of regular meditation sessions for the mental health staff, the Health Services department at UMass invited Phyllis Robinson to lead a Mindfulness and Yoga series for students in all Five Colleges as a means of reducing stress. Forty-six students participated in this pilot session, which will continue next year.

Other Efforts and Achievements: National and
Global Networking

As the word has spread that the Five College community and the now former Chancellor has been supporting these explorations, an outstanding cadre of individuals and institutions world wide have made contact with our Office, including Anthony Arcari of Integralis and the Integral Foundation, The Global Dialogue Institute in Philadelphia, the Mereon Institute in the United Kingdom, The Integral Institute in Colorado, the Institute for Integral Studies in California, the Institute for Integral Research in South Aftica, and the Spirit of the Times in Australia.

Arthur Zajonc has had ongoing relationships with: The Prague Center for Theoretical Studies and Ivan Havel; the University of Witten-Herdecke in Germany; The Center for Theoretical Studies; Charles University in Prague; and, the Shumacher College in the United Kingdom. The Templeton Foundation is using the visioning taking place here in the Five Colleges as a model for building its new funding priorities on spirituality and higher education. The Fetzer Institute has invited David K. Scott and Arthur Zajonc to join in conversations with others nationwide exploring the role of spirituality in higher education.

National organizations of higher education such, as the American Council on Education (ACE), the Association of American Higher Education (AAHE), and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), are also adopting approaches of integrative learning and spirituality into their agenda. Very recently, AACU held a conference in San Francisco in collaboration with the California Institute for Integral Studies and NASPA (the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) in which several key people from the Five Colleges community played significant roles as keynote speaker and organizers.

I hear today for the first, the river in the tree. – Emily Dickinson

VII. Future Programs and Achievements

It is precisely the despair of our times that convinces me
that a Renaissance is right around the corner.
– Matthew Fox

The proposed future programs of CILA are organized below into functional phases, which are necessary if higher education is to integrate contemplative approaches and explore the dimensions of spirit. CILA will offer diverse opportunities that provide different entry points for people to work with CILA themes. This is neither a linear nor sequential framework; people and organizations will not necessary move through these phases in a sequential fashion, but will, through their own circuitous growth processes, move into and through these phases as desired and needed. However, they do offer a progression from lesser to greater degrees of engagement and systemic commitment, and can serve to progressively embed the contemplative into the academy, thereby revealing the spiritual. These phases are:

A. Exploring Spirituality and Contemplation in the Academy

B. Emerging Systemic and Structural Change

C. Transforming Whole Institutions

D. Embodying the Principles of CILA

E. Sharing and Promoting Best Practices, Theory, Research Findings, and Stories, worldwide

A graphical illustration of the inter-relationships of these programs is given at the end of this section.

A. Programs and Gathering for Exploring Spirituality and Contemplation in the Academy

Most teachers, scholars, administrators, staff, and students are in the early stages of considering the relationship between spirituality and mainstream learning, research, and action, and few have explored the transformational nature of these themes. CILA will organize and sponsor single- and multi-day institutes, symposia, conferences and dialogues that address different aspects of our principles and priorities to give the explorer the opportunity to immerse her/himself in these themes for a shorter period of time. These events will be sponsored year-round, hosted in our proposed Retreat Center, and will ground the theories, concepts, and research findings in exercises, practices and multi-sensory experiences that allow for in-depth learning and integration. Explorers will learn methods and create strategies and plans for application in their own institutions back home. Themes that might be explored through CILA’s programs include:

n What research tells us about contemplative mind states and learning;

n The spiritual basis of social and environmental justice;

n The implications of evolving consciousness theories on the way we structure academic institutions and approaches to learning;

n The transformational potential for spirituality in organizational development.

Achievements:

CILA will sponsor three intensive, multi-day institutes per year for approximately 60 people each, one international conference every two years for upwards of a 1,000 people, monthly renewal retreats for approximately 15 members of the local academic community in each retreat, and a variety of seminars and symposia on special themes that could involve several hundred to several thousand people each year.

Budget:

$1.4 Million. The Retreat Center will serve as the hub for all programming

B. Emerging Systemic and Structural Change

There are growing numbers of faculty, administrators, staff and students who are ready to more deeply integrate the contemplative and spiritual dimensions into the campus community. For five years the Contemplative Mind in Society has been providing grants for individual faculty to integrate contemplative study and practice into coursework; this emerging model lays the foundation for the next stage of systemic growth. There are a variety of ways that campuses can implement more systemic and/or structural changes:

n Creating new academic majors, minors or interdisciplinary programs of study informed by the integrative model;

n Redesigning current departments and programs;

n Forming dialogue groups, holding workshops and retreats on CILA themes for the larger campus community;

n Sponsoring joint research on the spiritual dimensions of learning;

n Establishing contemplative retreats for student leaders on campus.

CILA may partner with the Contemplative Mind in Society to provide grants ranging from $30,000 to $75,000 per year over the next three years (approximately seven to ten per year) to campus groups for implementing these emerging plans. CILA will also convene campus representatives twice a year to build community, share documentation, curricula and best practices. Further, CILA will provide each grantee with a consulting partner who can work with them on-site if needed to implement their emerging visions for change.

Achievements:

Seven to ten campuses that are in the emerging phase will make programmatic and structural changes or begin to build capacity for systemic change.

Budget:

$1.4 Million

C. Transforming Whole Institutions

CILA will partner with seven diverse colleges or universities interested in transforming their institutions at all levels, and by focusing on the potential of the contemplative and spiritual dimensions for change. These seven institutions will have the full support of their presidents and trustees, and support from a critical mass of people from all sectors of the campus community. They will be selected on a competitive basis, and provide matching funds as part of their commitment to the change work. We understand that such large-scale transformation will take decades; we propose to offer coaching services to them for the first five years of their change work, and financial support for the first three years of actual implementation. We will partner with the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) (see Appendix VII for more information), founded by Peter Senge, to make available SOL’s theories and models to our higher education partners, and, together with SOL, will train coaches who will work closely with the campus change teams to guide them through the change process. We will also partner with the Education as Transformation Project (see Appendix VI), the Berkana Institute (see Appendix VIII), and the Contemplative Mind in Society (see Appendix V) to provide to our campus partners the experience of these organizations. We will bring together teams from these campuses two times per year to share and strengthen their practices (presidents or chancellors would come together once per year). They will be required to document the progress of their work and compile materials for broad dissemination.

Achievements:

We will have assisted seven institutions in the implementation of large-scale organizational and philosophical change processes. We plan to work with these institutions beyond the three-year reported grant cycle, so that we will continue to grow models for other campuses to look to. We will develop a growing cadre of campus leaders who have experience in different aspects of institution-wide change and who can assist emerging campuses as they prepare for change. We will feature these emerging leaders in CILA sponsored institutes, conferences and symposia, and will compile and disseminate documents on these change processes, best practices, and practices to avoid, along with curricula and emerging practices.

Budget:

$3.8 Million

D. Embodying the Principles of CILA

For CILA to be a national leader it must embody the principles it espouses. This will yield real life experience that will be invaluable in working with emerging and transforming partner institutions. These embodying efforts are:

1. Center for Integrative Learning and Action and its Retreat Center

The Center for Integrative Learning and Action has a group of exceptional people, a powerful theoretical framework and the experience and know-how to lead the transformation so needed within higher education. Building on the strong team already present, David Scott and the CILA Board will bring in a leading organizational development person to head the Transforming Schools component of CILA , who will in turn train a cadre of skilled coaches to lead institutions through “whole university” change. They will bring in practical visionaries to create the institutes, conferences, symposia, documents, proposed Scholars and Practitioners Program, and other initiatives that will locate CILA at the center of the consciousness shift we are helping to usher in.

As stated in a previous section, we plan to construct an office building that embodies and reflects our principles – one that is designed and built with ecologically sound materials and methods, that blends with and highlights the surrounding environment, and that allows for collaborative working and co-creating, to be located at Hampshire College.

We also plan to construct a Retreat Center that will be the first one in the nation designed exclusively for the higher education community for renewal and to explore the contemplative and spiritual dimensions of learning, research and action.

Achievements:

A cadre of staff persons and partners with the experience, wisdom and resources to lead higher education through the coming period of change. A first-of-its-kind Retreat Center that will eventually be utilized by institutions from across the region, country and world for retreats, meetings, institutes, conferences on CILA themes. A learning organization housed within structures that reflect and nurture the living systems in which they are embedded.

Budget:

Endowment for operational support $24.4 Million.
Capital expenditure for building $9.8 Million.

2. Five College Initiative

As previously stated, numerous individuals have been working together and individually in the Five Colleges of Western Massachusetts to cultivate a more contemplative climate and to bring to light the spiritual dimensions of learning and engagement. Two part-time staff persons, Phyllis Robinson and Diane Dana, have been serving as organizers to form relationships and generate activities for the Five College community (see Section VI on Past and Current Programs and Achievements). Building on existing efforts, CILA will continue to:

n Host institutes, retreats, symposia, including one already planned for 2003 which will bring together leading researchers in the areas of contemplation, cognition, and creativity for a multi-day symposia;

n Offer ongoing mindfulness meditation sessions, including an ongoing program of mindfulness practice and stress reduction for students, staff and faculty during the 2002-2003 school year, co-sponsored by CILA and Mental Health Services at UMass;

n Host the Five College Faculty Seminar for New Epistemologies and Contemplation;

n Support the development of courses in all Five Colleges that include contemplative practices in diverse disciplines;

n Convene the “Spirit at Work” staff working group;

n Host the Kira Institute for scientists;

n Work to integrate contemplative practices into staff meetings and retreats;

n Partner with local organizations already engaged in Integrative practices, including the Institute for the Study of Interdisciplinary Science (ISIS), and the Five College Contemplative Dance Series, both at Hampshire College.

It is also our goal that one or more of the Five Colleges will receive grants from CILA for emerging systemic/structural changes and for full transformational change. We see this programmatic piece as central to our efforts to be of service to other institutions across the country.

Achievements:

In three years, we anticipate that thousands of students in the Five Colleges will experience contemplative practices through their regular academic program, and through health services, mental health services, social justice experiences, service-learning initiatives, religious life programs and athletic activities. Hundreds of faculty will use practices that help students open, focus, engage and reflect, thereby furthering the potential for transformational learning. At least one of the Five Colleges will have begun the process of whole institutional change through CILA’s Transforming Whole Institutions Program. One or more of the others will begin the process of systemic or structural change through our program for emerging faculty/staff communities. CILA views the Five College area as a living laboratory where our principles and programs are being explored, integrated and embodied.

Budget:

Drawn from Exploring, Emerging & Transforming Program Budgets

3. The Owen Barfield School of Graduate Studies

While retaining its independent corporate status, the Barfield School, described in a previous section, would co-locate with the Center for Integrative Learning and Action, sharing infrastructure and facilities. We anticipate that this arrangement will create a synergy beneficial to both organizations (see Appendix III for details)

Achievements:

The Barfield School will model and assess the integrative, contemplative and spiritual principles of CILA. Masters and doctoral students from around the world will study and research a rich array of fields from an integrative and spiritual perspective. They will make significant contributions to our understanding of integrative learning and action. Barfield Graduates will bring CILA principles to the future of life and work.

Budget:

Endowment of $9.5 Million.

4. The New England Research Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness

Text Box: The flickering film of the phenomenal world is an illusion which cannot obscure the eternal unity that lies beneath.
– Arnold Toynbee As our second core partner, CILA proposes to found the New England Research Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness. It would undertake research in the areas of learning and consciousness. We have had preliminary conversations with Dr. John Pearson of the Sarnoff Research Laboratories about becoming director of this research facility. Dr. Pearson has degrees in physics, neuroscience and has extensive experience in contemplation. He has worked with the Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, and also has significant experience in managing a research group while at Sarnoff Research Laboratories. A brief description of his proposal for the Research Institute and Pearson’s curriculum vitae are included in Appendix IV. Other individuals who might play important roles at the institute include Urs Pohlman, M.D., Ph.D. neurologist and philosopher now at Duke University, and B. Alan Wallace Ph.D. and one of America’s foremost scholar-practitioners on Tibetan Buddhism and meditative practice. The research institute would collaborate closely with colleagues in the Five Colleges and elsewhere.

Achievements:

The Research Institute will make important contributions to the understanding of consciousness and learning. It will attract scholars, scientists and other researchers to the Center. Its work will result in research publications and intellectual property.

Budget:

Endowment for operational support $10.4M

5. CILA Visiting Scholars and Practitioners Program

CILA will invite individuals and teams of individuals to spend varying durations of time with us to advance thinking, practice and embodied knowing in this emerging field. We will invite scholars and researchers whose current explorations shed new light on topics including:

n the evolution of consciousness;

n our understandings of learning and human development;

n our understandings of the natural world and our relationship with it;

n our understandings of culture, different ways of knowing, and the dynamics of power relationships;

n our understandings of mind;

n the nature of knowledge.

We will also invite people who have grounded these theories and insights into practices and methods that advance the integrative in action, including:

n organizational development and change methods;

n teaching methodologies;

n spiritual and contemplative practices particularly appropriate to learning;

n group dynamics;

n anti-oppression work;

n social and environmental justice work; and

n practices for religious pluralism.

These scholars and practitioners will come for different lengths of time and will offer their theories and methods through articles, CILA-sponsored institutes, conferences and symposia, CILA sponsored Emerging and Transforming Programs, and through participation in courses in the Five Colleges. CILA will invite two scholars and/or practitioners to spend a year with us each year as Distinguished Visiting Scholars. These individuals will be expected to work on publications, and will teach courses at one or more of the Five Colleges. All scholars will be housed in our Retreat Center rooms during their residencies or in faculty housing in the Five Colleges, and their offices will be housed in the CILA office complex.

Achievements:

We anticipate that this programmatic area will focus the new and now disparate thinking and practice, and will produce an enormous amount of clarity, synthesis, and applications to higher education. For example, bringing together cognitive scientists, transpersonal psychologists, spiritual scholars from diverse traditions, and contemplative artists to discuss and synthesize their knowledge into a coherent theory for accelerating empathic capacities in people could yield very useful information. We have funds budgeted for two Distinguished Faculty per year, and for 20 more individuals to visit our Center each year. We anticipate that this program will produce numerous articles, together with a minimum of 30 public learning opportunities through our Exploring Program and Retreat Center and the Five Colleges each year that will involve thousands of people from higher education nationally and abroad in conversation and experiential learning. New knowledge and practice will undoubtedly advance the field.

Budget:

$32.5 Million endowment.

Text Box: Fixing and helping creates a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected…. Fixing and helping are strategies to repair life. I serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy. – Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

6. Spirit and Learning in Action

Engagement takes many forms on college campuses. Experiential learning and applied learning methods that allow students to put classroom theory into practice in myriad settings. Service-learning that enables students to apply new skills and theory to address local social and environmental problems. Social justice, environmental justice, economic justice, political organizing – numerous extra-curricular programs engage the idealism and energy of our nation’s matriculated youth. CILA believes that engaged learning in its myriad forms is central both to integrative learning and to the health of campus life. CILA is seeking partners to work with on concrete initiatives that allow students and faculty to explore the spiritual dimensions of justice work, the potential for the contemplative mind in solving societal problems, and the practice of embodied ethics through action. Potential partners include Spirit in Action, Inc., No Ordinary Time, Inc., stone circles, Inc., Creating our Future, Inc., and the Karuna Center for Peace Building, with which we will be co-located with at Hampshire College.

Achievements: To be determined.

Budget:

Through the Exploring and Visiting Scholars/Practitioners budget, we will draw in partners to serve these programs, thereby solidifying our efforts in this area.

E. Sharing and Promoting Best Practices, Theory, Research Findings, Stories

Text Box: Learning to Know
Learning to Do
Learning to Live Together Learning to Be

– Learning: The Treasure Within, Report to UNESCO from the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, 1999. CILA’s Exploring, Emerging, Transforming and Embodying Programs will produce a large number of publications: books, articles, case studies, curricula, transcripts from institutes and symposia. CILA will develop processes to compile these documents and disseminate them broadly, through scholarly journals, trade publications, distinguished publishing houses, the mainstream media, and directly to campuses worldwide. We will also develop and maintain an interactive website where we can feature our documentation and those of our worldwide partners. Further, CILA will partner with Tony Arcari and Allan Combs through the Integral Foundation and its journal Integralis, which will in all likelihood be located in the Five College area. We anticipate that articles from our scholars, practitioners and higher education partners will be published in Integralis and will influence emerging theory on the evolution of human consciousness.

We also envision an in-house CILA library/resource center containing CILA documents and other writing on integrative learning and related topics.

Founding members of CILA have spent their professional lives building relationships with people and organizations across the country and world engaged in this work -- national educational organizations such as AAHE, ACE, AACU and integrative organizations such as the Global Dialogue Institute, The Mereon Institute in Wales, UK – and philosophers and thinkers world wide. As both a convener and participant in the emerging network of networks, CILA will work strategically with these networks to advance the work.

Achievements:

We anticipate that CILA’s documentation will add significantly to the emerging sphere of integrative education and will, because of our relationships with mainstream higher education, likely impact scholarship, discovery and engagement in an accelerated fashion. Our convening of and participation in networks worldwide will serve to significantly promote the Integrative.

Budget:

Drawn from CILA’s operating endowment and from the collaborating organizations.

Key Personnel

The following people have been part of the core group who have founded and co-created the Center for Integrative Learning and Action and will be key personnel in the activities of this proposal. Fuller curricula vitae are provided in Appendix IX.

David K. Scott has worked as a nuclear scientist, and as an educator for 40 years . He has served in a variety of administrative roles, including, Director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Cyclotron Facility, Research Director at the National Super-conducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, where he also became Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. He has held distinguished chairs in Physics, Astronomy and Astronomy and Chemistry, and in Science, Learning and Society. From 1993 to 2001, Scott was the Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts. As a nuclear scientist and educator, Scott has held an interest in the unity of knowledge and has written and lectured widely on these subjects for the past 15 years. Quantum physics, synchronicity, Gaia theory, chaos theory – these and other emerging fields and theories convinced Scott that explorations into the physical realm yielded suggestions and questions about the existence of unseen systems and dynamics that appear to greatly impact living systems. Scott turned his explorations to questions about the applicability of these scientific findings in the functioning of organizations. All these experiences have led him to focus his future work on spirituality in higher education, and the transformation of universities through more integrative approaches.

Susan M. Awbrey, a key collaborator in the work on Integrative Universities, is Vice Provost at Oakland University, and an expert on organizational transformation and development. She led an initiative with Scott and Peter Senge of the Society for Organizational Learning at MIT and others, which culminated in a proposal for creating a Center for Integrative Universities in 1999. Many of these ideas are embedded in this proposal, and Susan Awbrey continues to be a key leader in providing intellectual, creative and practical support for the philosophy of this proposal.

Arthur Zajonc is professor of physics at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1978. 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, Innsbruck, and Hanover. He is President of the Anthroposophical Society in America and the Lindisfarne Association. Arthur is a founding member of the Kira Institute, an organization that explores the interface between science, values and spirituality. In 1997 he served as scientific coordinator of “The New Physics and Cosmology,” the sixth Mind and Life Dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama. Arthur lectures widely on the foundations of quantum physics, the history and philosophy of science, the relationship between higher education and spirituality, and on the meditative life. He is author of Catching the Light, co-author of Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe’s Way of Science. His book Dialogues with the Dalai Lama on the New Physics and Cosmology is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Frederique Apffel-Marglin is a Professor of Anthropology at Smith College and co-founder of the Five College Faculty Seminar on New Epistemologies and Contemplation and has spent her entire academic career raising important questions regarding our Western knowledge system and its position of dominance around the world. She and her husband Stephen Marglin, Professor of Economics at Harvard co-edited a book of essays called Dominating Knowledge. She has spent years in India and Peru working with indigenous peoples and rather than studying their practices, she entered into deep relationships and conversations resulting in her creation in 1996 of the Center For Mutual Learning. It was during this time that she met Phyllis Robinson and over many cups of tea shared their realizations from meditation practice, and together they began imagining a gathering of faculty to talk about the role contemplative practice might play in the university classroom, and what the implications of this might be for a transformed university.

Phyllis Robinson received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Research and Administration from the School of Education at UMass/Amherst in 1997. During her course of study she spent months at a time in the Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai/Cambodian border and in Cambodia. It was during the course of this work that Phyllis came to understand the impact that epistemology, or ways of knowing, have on our ways of being and interacting. While attempting to bring the best of Western knowledge, even engaging in an extensive research project on refugee reintegration, she came to see that her core ways of knowing differed so dramatically from the Cambodians that she had to examine her conditioning and open to other ways of knowing and being in the world. Her 25 years of Buddhist Meditation practice created a link between her ability to understand that conditioning and her connection to the ways in which the Western ways of knowing has dominated peoples globally. Phyllis’ interest is in the relationship between contemplative practices, other ways of knowing and academic inquiry, led her to create an organization called Courageous Crossings which provided contemplative practice retreats and dialogue for international development policymakers and practitioners to explore similar questions Phyllis joined the team planning to mount the 2000 conference “Going Public with Spirituality in Higher Education,” where she stepped into the next phase of her life’s work. Following the conference, she teamed up with Diane Dana to catalyze these explorations in the Five Colleges and to lay the groundwork for CILA.

Diane Dana spent the first ten years of her professional life working in K-12 education reform, helping to launch the service-learning movement in the United States. In 1992 she went to the Massachusetts Department of Education to create and administer the state’s service-learning program, using this methodology as a means to embody and further a larger integrative reform and restructuring effort underway at the state and local levels. Diane began to appreciate both the limits of contemporary education methods and vision, together with the potential for education to influence human growth in all areas of our beings – consciousness, heart, mind, body, spirit. Through her work in education reform and service-learning, she came to believe that without attention to the spiritual and psycho-emotional dimensions of people, change work could not be transformational, as transformational change entails change at all levels of the individual and organization. In 1998, Diane attended the Wellesley Conference on spirituality in higher education, then went to Wellesley College to serve as coordinator of the Education as Transformation Project (EasT). As part of her work with EasT, she served as a consultant to the Amherst team in the planning of the 2000 conference. Following the conference, she joined Phyllis, David, Arthur and others to lay the groundwork for CILA.

Katja Hahn D’Errico As one of the core group members of CILA, Katja has spent her life immersed in service work, college teaching, student business, and in the past several years has brought together her dedication to social justice with her spiritual life. Born and raised in Germany with memories of Nazism as a small child, her political sensibilities have consistently been played out in her choice of livelihood. She has worked with the Navajos in Shiprock New Mexico, started Food Cooperatives, and has been the director of Student Business at the University of Massachusetts for 15 years. She received her Doctorate in Education and Social Justice and became an adjunct faculty member in that department. Now she teaches two courses at UMass. One titled: Leadership and Spirituality and the other a graduate course which she co-teaches with Phyllis Robinson called The Spiritual Basis for Social Justice Practice. Katja’s teaching and working on issues of social justice and oppression are informed and guided by spiritual principles. Her spiritual philosophy is based on the knowledge of the limitation and influences of culture, language and the human need to dominate. She brings to CILA her commitment to creating a place where voices from different cultures can be valued and heard.

Another two key participants in the development of ideas on Integrative Learning and Action are graduate students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the Department of Educational Policy, Research and Administration in the School of Education and in the Center for International Education.

Vachel Miller, who is completing his doctoral dissertation on Exploring the Ecology of Learning. He has co-edited a book of essays entitled Education as Transformation: Spirituality Transforming Campus Life – Reflections on Spirituality and Religious Pluralism, and with working on another book of essays entitled Going Public: Spirituality in Higher Education and the Workplace. Together with Susan Awbrey and David K. Scott, Miller is also writing a book entitled Out of Our Minds: Integrative Learning for a Fractured World.

Fan Yihong, who recently completed her doctoral dissertation entitled From a Holistic Worldview to Holistic Education: Cross-Boundary Journeys of Educators Towards Integrative Learning and Integral Being, has researched these ideas internationally in China, Ecuador and in Vietnam. Dr. Fan was a professor in Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China, where she worked for ten years and plans to work once again on transformational approaches to higher education in China, and with whom CILA may have a partnering relationship in the future.

Advisory Panels

The directorate will receive guidance from an two Advisory Councils. A National Council will be comprised of individuals with experience in Integrative Organizations and Contemplative Practice drawn from Business and Academe. The International Council will be comprised of leaders of Integral and Integrative organizations worldwide.

The National Panel will meet three times per year, and the International Council will meet yearly, including a combined meeting of the two councils.

To provide cross-communication and linkages, some of the members of the Advisory Councils may also serve on the Board of Directors.

IX. Financial Projections

This financial presentation tracks the various components of the proposal in Section VII: Future Programs/Projects and Achievements. The projections are in two categories: endowment funds which yield an ongoing revenue stream for operating support by expending 5% of the revenues generated from the endowment and reinvesting the remainder to keep the endowment growing in pace with inflation (these items are identified with the Letter E); one time expenditures for construction projects, for example, or expenditures which may also be recurring but for which revenues will be regenerated in the future from other grants, fees and contracts (these items are identified with the letter O).

Please see the attached file containing the CILA budget (this budget will appear properly in this position in the copies we send by mail.

X. Conclusion

It is estimated that, in the United States, a new cultural segment called “cultural creatives” comprises a significant portion of the adult population. The movement is growing due to the fact that the human family is being challenged to realize a new level of identity, responsibility and purpose. These needs must be supported by education in the future. The Center for Integrative Learning and Action is designed for this purpose. The world may be approaching one of the great pivotal points in human history through discoveries in the evolution of consciousness which have paved the way for a new theoretical foundation, a more integral and holistic model of the universe and of human beings. Similar ideas have been implicit in various spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures for hundreds and thousands of years. We believe that CILA can accelerate this transformation and we welcome this opportunity to make a proposal which will make the vision and past activities of CILA a powerful transforming force for the future.

Ultimately the universe has to be understood as a single, undivided whole.
– David Bohm

Appendices

I. Philosophy of CILA

II. Five College Consortium and Hampshire College

III. The Barfield School

IV. New England Research Institute for the Study of Learning and Consciousness

V. Contemplative Mind in Society

VI. Education as Transformation Project

VII. Society for Organizational Learning

VIII. The Berkana Institute

IX. Curricula Vitae – Cofounders

I. Vision

II. Guiding Principles Of CILA

III. Mission

IV. Goals

THE FIVE COLLEGES

IX. Financial Projections

X. Conclusion