Next week, Batten Dean Ian Solomon and professors Kirsten Gelsdorf and Abigail Scholer will travel to Dharamsala, India with leaders from UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center to spend a week in conversation and community with practitioners and researchers in the contemplative sciences from around the world, including this year’s cohort of Dalai Lama Fellows. They will also have an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama during their stay.

Under the theme of “Compassion in Action,” the attendees will share their wisdom, learn from each other and deepen their understanding of what it means to lead from the heart and how that translates into real-world positive change. 

“The work the Dalai Lama has done particularly on compassion has been compelling to me as a world philosophy and approach to peacemaking,” Solomon says. “Clearly our capacity as a species to learn to get along and to co-exist peaceably and non-violently is one of the greatest challenges we grapple with.”

Begun in 2010 with the support of the Dalai Lama, the fellowship is jointly hosted by UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center, whose new building, the Contemplative Commons, will open this spring, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Renee Crown Wellness Institute, and Stanford University’s Office for Religious and Spiritual Life. It is an independent, non-sectarian program integrating contemplative practices and personal flourishing with social innovation that has generated an active global leadership network for current and emerging change makers.  

“These are the types of leaders we are eager to be supporting and developing here at the Batten School. They are doing such interesting things in every part of the world, and taking risks, demonstrating courage, really trying hard to serve their communities,” says Solomon, who invited several of the fellows to Pavillion X for an informal evening of conversation during their weeklong visit to UVA last summer.

He is also eager to have the opportunity to work closely with Gelsdorf, professor of practice of public policy, director of Batten’s Global Humanitarian Policy and expert in humanitarian aid strategy, and Scholer, Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy and expert in the intersection of motivational thinking and leadership. 

“We are all interested in seeing how contemplative practices can enrich the quality of teaching and research here at Batten and in thinking about what this means for our ambition, our aspiration to have the most impactful leadership education and public policy scholarship in the world,” Solomon says. 

Look for a follow-up story in April of reflections from Solomon, Gelsdorf and Scholer about their experience.