Facilitators

SEE Learning Educator Preparation Workshop Facilitators Dharamshala, India ✿ December 11-14, 2017

GESHE LOBSANG TENZIN NEGI , Ph.D. serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics at Emory University, endowed through the support of the Dalai Lama Trust. The center is dedicated to the realization of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s vision for compassion-based ethics in education. He is also a Professor of Practice in Emory University’s Department of Religion and the founder and spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc., in Atlanta, GA. In addition, he is the co-founder and director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership which includes the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI), a program created at the invitation of His Holiness to implement a comprehensive modern science curriculum specifically for Tibetan monastics, and CBCT® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training), a contemplative method for cultivating compassion in a secular context . Lobsang was born in Kinnaur, a remote Himalayan region adjoining Tibet. A former monk, he began his monastic training at The Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamashala, India and continued his education at Drepung Loseling Monastery in south India, where in 1994 he received his Geshe Lharampa degree. Lobsang completed his Ph.D. at Emory University in 1999; his interdisciplinary dissertation centered on traditional Buddhist and contemporary Western approaches to emotions and their impact on wellness. His current research focuses on the complementarity of modern science and contemplative practice. Email: snegi@emory.edu

JENNIFER KNOX has been involved with SEE Learning since its first steps in Summer 2015, helping to shape the original framework and working with the team of educators to develop the first draft of the curriculum. As SEE Learning
continues to be developed, she has served as an education consultant, curriculum designer, teacher training facilitator, and liaison with partner schools. Jen is an educator with over 17 years’ experience in a variety of educational settings nationally and abroad. For 12 years, she has taught visual art in the Upper School at Woodward Academy, a college preparatory independent school in Atlanta, GA. As a long-time certified instructor of CBCT (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training), Jen has worked to incorporate CBCT into educational settings including formal research studies with elementary teachers and administrators in an Atlanta-area International Baccalaureate charter school and with parents of small children at the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also taught CBCT to students at Emory University and to elementary and middle school faculty as a part of a federal innovation grant in Atlanta Public Schools. Currently Jen is coordinating with senior Woodward Academy administrators to implement SEE Learning into the Upper School Advisory Program, align K-12 Mindfulness initiatives and teaches a stand alone SEE Learning course with high school students. Email: Jennifer.knox@woodward.edu

VEN. GESHE LHAKDOR has served His Holiness the Dalai Lama as his translator and religious assistant since 1989. A distinguished Buddhist scholar, Geshe Lhakdor was the English translator for His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, from 1989 to 2005. He has co-translated and co-produced several books by the Dalai Lama. As Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, Geshe facilitates the Science for Monks program and shares his own expertise as a scholar of science and philosophy. Geshe is a trustee of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility, established by His Holiness. He is also the Director of the Central Archive of His Holiness and a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Tibetan Classics in Montreal, Canada. He is now the Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamshala India, and head of the Science Education Project. From 1976 to 1986, he studied specialized Buddhist philosophy in the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, Dharamshala and received the Master of Prajnaparamita in 1982. He also received the Master of Madhyamika in 1989 and the Master of Philosophy from the University of Delhi. Since 2002, Geshe Lhakdor has been an Honorary Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In 2008, he was also conferred an Honorary Professorship by the University of Delhi, Department of Psychology.