March 17, 2021 • ISSUE 565
MIU Faculty Contribute to New Book on Innovative Education
MIU faculty have contributed to a new anthology of educational research and essays, titled Advancing Innovation and Sustainable Outcomes in International Graduate Education, published by IGI Global. The book features groundbreaking research by MIU faculty members Fred Travis, Dennis Heaton, John Collins, Anil Maheshwari, and doctoral student Nakita Bruno Green, with a foreword by President John Hagelin and President Paul Chan of HELP University in Malaysia. The book is a collaboration between MIU faculty and faculty from HELP University.
The book was edited by MIU adjunct professor and MBA alumnus Mohan Raj Gurubatham and Geoffrey Alan Williams. Mr. Gurubatham conceived the anthology around new paradigms of graduate education. He works as professor and digital learning expert at the Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Management Graduate School of Business of HELP University.
Professor Gurubatham has years of experience working with global consulting firms in technology, change management, e-branding, culture, and learning. He has received international acclaim for his higher order thinking model, which has shown that the practice of the Transcendental Meditation® technique expands a person’s conscious thinking and facilitates knowledge transfer. In his conclusion to the book, he applies this model to integrate the ideas from the various chapters and showcases the significance of Consciousness-Based℠ education in improving the effectiveness of graduate studies.
A chapter by Dennis Heaton and PhD student Nakita Bruno Green addresses how the inclusion of tools for consciousness development in management education can support achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Anil Maheshwari contributed two chapters. One shows how the principles of natural law can provide an integrative framework for teaching data analytics, resulting in stress-free learning. The second chapter examines how big data technologies and architectures can be applied to meet the special needs of emerging societies, especially in the healthcare sector.
Fred Travis wrote three chapters for the book. The first, with John Collins, summarizes a study showing that students participating in Consciousness-Based education had higher levels of brain integration, associated with emotional stability and success in life, and higher global constructive thinking, leading to greater success on the job and more stable personal and social relationships.
Professor Travis’s second chapter on “Innovation, Creativity and Brain Integration” suggests that creativity may depend on a higher order of brain integration. His third chapter, “Negative and Positive Mind-Wandering,” shows how positive mind-wandering enables the mind to escape the constraints of the current situation and explore novel solutions.