5th International Positive Psychology Summit

Twenty-eight of my MAPP classmates attended the Summit that concluded last night.  A dozen or so capstones were presented through posters.  Sherri has "Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence" as a strength and she used it well here; our poster was gorgeous!  I've got to admit, I wasn't an optimist about how much traffic we would receive.  Our display was scheduled for 9 -11 on Saturday and the other sessions scheduled for that time included Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman!  But, the room drew quite a crowd.  Sherri and I were in a back corner and still talked to a stream of folks throughout the morning.  Although our capstone focused on a positive psychology profile of a large, non-urban school system, I had spoken at a Friday session about MAPP on what's happening in the legal field and found found myself talking with folks about both law and education.  For example, I had a very interesting conversation with Dr. Carol Kaufman of Harvard on new technologies and micro-learning as they might apply to continuing legal education for lawyers.

On the subject of education, Tal Ben-Shahar gave a workshop on teaching positive psychology.  Dr. Ben-Shahar was the instructor of the positive psychology course at Harvard that got so much attention earlier this year for its enrollment of over 850 students, and he demonstrated how he uses music, video, stories and data to create a rich learning experience in his class.  It was a personal inspiration as I am preparing for a series of CLE presentations later this Fall.

Finally, those of us from the first MAPP class got to meet the members of "MAPP.2".  They are an impressive group!  They have three lawyers, two of whom are currently practicing and one in the banking world, so I enjoyed sharing ideas with them and look forward to working together in the future.  The young woman from India who contacted me last year is enrolled, and they have two class members commuting from Hong Kong!  Quite an international contingent.  Several of the international folks from my class made it to the Summit made it, including Emma Judge from the UK and Juan Young from Switzerland.  It was wonderful to see my classmates as the relationships we built are special.  I've added links to what some of my classmates are doing, so if you're interested in how MAPP degrees can be put to use, check them out.