Join Elenice DeSouza Oliveira (Sociology) for workshops and discussions designed to ignite your curiosity, inspire your insights, and empower you to foster a culture of flourishing in the Montclair State University community. 

What is Human Flourishing?

Inspired by the transformative work of the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM) at the University of Wisconsin, led by psychologist and neuroscientist Richard Davidson, human flourishing is the development of well-being through cultivating mindfulness, awareness, connection, wisdom, and purpose. Well-being is a skill that can be learned and enhanced through training and practice.

Human Flourishing is an interdisciplinary field, and many at Montclair are already doing work in human flourishing. This series supports like-minded faculty and staff to share their wisdom and expertise so more students can gain from the art and science of Human Flourishing.

Universities and colleges around the country and beyond are developing courses and programs in Human Flourishing, finding that these programs support the well-being and success of their students.

For example, see programs at the University of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania State University,, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Harvard University, and Stanford University.

2026 Working Group on Education for Human Flourishing

Flourishing in Education: Self, Others, and Together

This six-session series invites faculty, staff, mentors, tutors, and student leaders to explore how education can become a space where individuals and communities truly flourish. Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship and evidence-based practice, the program centers the full humanity of those who teach, learn, advise, and lead—recognizing that flourishing is not only student-centered, but ecosystem-centered.

Program Overview

The Working Group on Education for Human Flourishing is an interdisciplinary learning community designed for educators, campus professionals, and student leaders who wish to reimagine education as a space where people—not just outcomes—can thrive.

At a time when higher education is experiencing rising stress, burnout, disconnection, and questions of meaning, this program offers a holistic yet carefully bounded approach to flourishing. Flourishing is understood not simply as the absence of stress or distress, but as the capacity to live, learn, and work with meaning, resilience, connection, and purpose—even amid challenge.

Grounded in classical and contemporary scholarship on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, drawing from the Greek concept of eudaimonia as human flourishing—along with insights from neuroscience, education, psychology, and the humanities—the program explores flourishing as a multidimensional and interdependent process, with particular attention to psychological, relational, and ecological dimensions of educational life. Participants engage in both theoretical exploration and practical application, learning skills that can be meaningfully integrated into classrooms, advising, mentoring, leadership, and personal life.

Why a Working Group on Education for Human Flourishing?

Research increasingly demonstrates that well-being and flourishing are essential to student retention, learning, leadership development, and long-term professional success. However, in higher education, flourishing is often framed as a student responsibility alone, disconnected from the lived experiences of faculty, staff, and the broader institutional culture. 

This Working Group is grounded in a different premise: Education for flourishing is an ecosystem. When faculty, staff, and student leaders are supported in cultivating awareness, resilience, connection, and purpose, they are better equipped to support others—and the entire university community benefits.

By attending to inner lives, relational dynamics, and structural contexts, the program strengthens the development of flourishing competencies that are increasingly recognized as essential for leadership, adaptability, communication, ethical decision-making, and sustainable professional life.

Program Structure & Learning Design

• Six 90-minute facilitated sessions (interactive, reflective, and applied)
• A blend of short talks, experiential practices, dialogue, and reflection
• Opportunities to apply learning between sessions in real-world contexts
• Ongoing reflection and dialogue via Canvas or a shared online space
• Invitation to continue into a Phase II Flourishing Teaching and Leadership Community of Practice

Interested in Human Flourishing initiatives outside of these workshops? Contact Elenice DeSouza Oliveira directly.

To join the associated Canvas Community for Human Flourishing, please complete this Google Form.