VIU team aims to create Centre for Consciousness Studies

A team of professors at Vancouver Island University hope to raise consciousness in education and create healthy classrooms.

“Students have long endured a non-holistic education that emphasizes cognitive learning,” said Les Malbon, physical education professor at VIU.

“It’s now the time to create healthy classrooms through the development of holistic, cultural, and transformative education that includes the presence of the emotional, physical and spiritual domains in harmony with cognitive learning.”

Malbon and a handful of professors have formed an interdisciplinary working group to investigate the idea of creating a Centre for Consciousness Studies at VIU.

As a first step, the group is hosting a public presentation called “Consciousness in the Age of the Heart” on May 20 at VIU’s Nanaimo campus. Keynote speaker is Dr. Lee Brown, Director of the University of BC Institution of Aboriginal Health and former coordinator of the Indigenous Education doctoral program.

Brown is an expert in the area of emotional health and education and has published in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Native Education and AlterNative: A New Zealand International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship. In 2007, he served as the guest editor of the UBC Educational Leadership Journal.

In his talk, Dr. Brown will present a transformational view of learning within a theory of education designed to create emotional competency.  The six principles of emotional education will be presented with a discussion of their relationship to the maturing of human consciousness. The talk will be followed by a small reception.

The event takes place Thursday, May 20 at 7 pm, at VIU’s Nanaimo campus, 900 Fifth Street, Building 356, Room 109.

The interdisciplinary group includes faculty from VIU’s nursing, political science, psychology, physics, philosophy, English, Fine Arts and Education departments who are already teaching individual classes related to consciousness including health and the human spirit, spirituality, energy work and medicine.  

“These classes relate to different ways of knowing and being, and indigenous knowledge,” said Malbon. “We believe students and the community are hungry for an expansion of this type of education.”

 For more information about Dr. Brown’s presentation, contact Les Malbon, professor of Physical Education, at 250 753-3245 (local 2374) or Psychology professor Rachel Cooper, at local 2137.