Spring 2019: Cultivating Wisdom and Well-Being for Personal and Professional Growth — COMM 4831

WHEN

Aristotle wrote that the main goal of life is to achieve well-being, which he associated with human flourishing. It involves health, happiness, and prosperity across several dimensions of everyday life, including the physical, emotional, social, economic, spiritual, environmental, and political. Today we live amidst significant challenges to and opportunities for well-being, each requiring appropriate choices and behaviors. But what does it mean to make the most appropriate or right decisions, and to act accordingly?

Aristotle maintained that the foremost path to well-being is to nurture one’s wisdom, which is widely regarded as the pinnacle of human virtues. Drawing on both Western and Eastern philosophy, as well as contemporary social science and business literature, the goal of this course is to seek new understandings, self-insights, and useful tools in regard to wisdom and well-being, particularly as to how these concepts apply to a variety of professional and personal situations across the life span.

Within professional contexts, we will delve into topics such as customer relationships; marketing strategy; corporate ethics and social-ecological responsibility; organizational leadership and strategy; and human resources/employee relations. We will advance toward our course goal through readings, videos, exercises (in and out of class); and open discussions; in addition to a day-long field trip to an ashram (contemplative retreat center); and a culminating individual project for growth through career and personal life.