Background
There is a growing awareness that our current institutions, including educational institutions, are not addressing the world's most pressing issues: ecological well-being, social justice, violence, alienation, and a lack of meaning and inspiration.
There is an extraordinary need for institutions to catch up with social reality. Educational programs, which have so much impact on the ability to effectively deal with these issues, have a particularly strong obligation in this regard. This M.Ed. program draws on the ideas and practices of those who have deeply studied and wisely responded to today's opportunities and problems.
The Great Work
The Great Work has to do with the promise of creating an era when the human community comes to live in mutually enhancing relations with the planet's larger community of life and life systems. Cultural historian and ecologist Thomas Berry refers to this new chapter in Earth's history as the Ecozoic era. The Great Work of our time comes in response to two realizations: 1) the devastation of the planet brought by human activity, and 2) that the task before us is to reinvent the human to become a benign presence on Earth.
We begin this task on the individual level by responding to what mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme describes as "the allurements that beckon us, by following our passions and interests." The Great Work involves aligning our personal sense of allurement with the larger creative dynamics of the Earth community.
This program provides an opportunity for students to contextualize their own interests within The Great Work.
Some questions that punctuate the course of study
How does integrative learning create a context for exploring your Great Work?
What is a learning community and what capacities are evoked through participation?
In what ways can we bring a sense of community - local, regional and global - to the learning process?
How does systems thinking lead to eco-learning and the creation of integrative approaches?
How can an eco-cosmological worldview establish a foundation for students to develop their personal contributions to a healthier and more sustainable Earth community?
Colloquium-based Learning
During the last few years there has been a proliferation of courses and degrees offered under the umbrella of distance learning. For the most part these academic pursuits are similar to attending a conventional university. The professor lectures and gives out assignments, students hand in papers, there are tests and there are grades.
In contrast we promote an integrative view hosted by a virtual "e-campus", where students work in collaborative learning communities, where faculty are mentors and co-learners, where creativity and self-direction are valued, and where there is a an understanding of dialogue as process. Communication embraces an appreciation for each person's contribution to the learning process. Students from all over the world have enrolled in this program and participated in our on-line colloquia.
The Endicott-TIES virtual space was developed in conjunction with BigMind Media. We use the Catalyst software which is a highly customizable social space for community development, collaborative learning, in-depth conversation and problem-solving in a supportive atmosphere that is focused and well-organized.
About the E-Campus
The heart of the teaching and learning process relies on interactive distance
learning accessible through state of the art conferencing software. Faculty
and students meet in asynchronous classroom conferences, building upon one
another's insights and understanding.
Once signed-on to the network, students have an opportunity to become an active member of an enthusiastic learning community - exchanging ideas, problem-solving and responding to dialogue with students and faculty from diverse cultures and countries.
There are formal and informal meetings in community journals that are relevant to current life experience. Faculty-practitioners advise and mentor students throughout the program. Most graduates and students will tell you that the on-line community becomes a second "home" for gathering with people who share a common vision.
On-line activities include: meaningful interaction through directed readings; pondering provocative questions posed by faculty and students; replying to postings of other students; and formal and informal dialogues.
Integrative Seminars
The core material and course work is presented through a series of on-line seminars where students and faculty post responses to assigned reading (or viewing).
Subsequent to the initial posting, participants comment and weave responses, searching for new insights. Quite often the authors of the assigned books are available during the on-line dialogue.
A sample of an integrative seminar dialogue can be accessed from the download section at the bottom of this page.
Area of Emphasis
Each student chooses an area of emphasis --a passionate interest-- within the concentration of Integrative Learning. This "independent" portion of the work accounts for one third of the degree requirements. The integrative seminars provide a "lens" for the exploration of this emphasis area.
Examples include, environmental awareness, media literacy, art education, distance learning, leadership training, learning communities, natural law, cosmology, art and community, healing, experiential education, caring in the culinary arts, ecoliteracy, leadership, experiential learning, Earth education, administration, and spiritual ecology.
Students are provided with "field mentors" who are experts in their emphasis area and who help them frame their explorations. And all of this work is encountered with the implicit goal of developing students' content and process-based knowledge for contribution to the Earth Community.
Practicum
The practicum is based on your Emphasis Area. Students take their new knowledge and apply it in a real setting. The practicum emerges from the research question(s) you choose to explore and involves a minimum of 150 hours of applied learning.
Dialogue
One of the gifts that humans can bring to Earth's awareness of itself is our
dramatic need for and sense of creating meaning. One of the processes of
communication that makes this possible is Dialogue. In this case we refer
to a variation on a particular form of dialogue described by Physicist David
Bohm. Bohm's constant thread that particularly relates to our dialogue is
that we are investigating the possibilities for:
These are some of the hallmarks of process that we may take into the new "edge" of web or Internet-learning and exchanges.
Throughout the three semesters faculty and students also engage in telephone conference calls.
Downloads
Required
Book List (HTML)
Course
Titles and Descriptions (HTML)
Integrative
Seminar Excerpts (PDF)
If you don't have the Adobe Acrobat program for
reading PDFs you can download it free from this link.
"...a viable future for the human community rests largely upon a new relationship between the human communities and the planet on which we dwell...Both our spiritual and physical survival depend on the visible world around us. We would have no inner life of mind, imagination or or emotion without the wonder, the beauty and intimacy offered us by the dawn and sunset, the singing birds and the cry of the wolf, by the meadows and all their flowers, by the grandeur of the mountains and the vastness of the sea. To preserve all this in its integrity is the common task before us."
Thomas Berry
"How will you awaken your creativity? By responding to the allurements
that beckon to you, by following your passions and interests. Alluring activity
draws you into being, just as it drew the star into being. Our life and powers
come forth through our response to allurement."
Brian Swimme
" The reinvention of human civilization takes the integral nature of the Earth and Universe as its foundation."
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry