Case Western Reserve University
The Weatherhead School of Management
A World Inquiry in NEO: Positive Life & Health Initiative
-Concept Paper-
Important Inspirations:
"Willing is not enough; we must do." -- Goethe
Case Western Reserve University strives to be the most powerful learning environment in the world. We constantly challenge ourselves to create a culture of transformation so engaging that students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and even visitors to campus become passionate about moving beyond themselves to express creativity, to pursue innovation and discovery, and to serve humanity.[1]
The Weatherhead School of Management is among the world's best business schools, and is a leading catalyst for advancing bold ideas that have a lasting impact on business and society.[2]
A World Inquiry in NEO: Positive Life & Health Initiative
Imagine a Positive Life & Health Initiative at Case that represents the highest knowledge on the planet to educate and design a wholistic life from early childhood development to successful aging. What is the human legacy to the planet?
A Vision evolving: How it began
The vision, mission and values of the Case-Weatherhead Positive Life & Health Initiative/Center were formulated following an appreciative inquiry into health during three years of conversations with students, faculty, staff, and NEO community members. Now the vision is being uplifted to a world inquiry in order to increase the potential of positive change.
An Appreciative Inquiry
Discover:
Who else has envisioned such an initiative or center in the world?
What research and curriculum exists today on this topic in the world?
What other initiatives or activities could help inform this concept paper and proposal?
Dream:
What is the best possible outcome that we can envision together for this Positive Life & Health initiative?
Close your eyes and imagine that it is now the year 2025. How has the world evolved the idea of the Positive Life & Health Center into a beautiful reality? What does the initiative look like? How do you interact with it? Who comes there? What are the greatest benefits of this center to its community and the world? What sparks your imagination?
Design:
What educational programs are offered here? What students come here? What professors and educators come here? What disciplines have been merged together to make this positive life and health center vibrantly active? How did this center come to life? Who is instrumental? What organizations have contributed most to its sustained success? What's next?
Destiny:
What does implementation look like? What are the metrics of success? How has the mission been served? Has the vision evolved and grown to include new educational purposes? How many graduates are now practicing the principles taught at the positive life and health center?
Define:
Where else in the world is this initiative being replicate? Are the centers benchmarking and connecting with each other? What means of communication and collaboration do they use? What strategic ideas and knowledge assets emerge from the coordinated efforts to support the success of a knowledge-driven economy?
Initial Concept:
To envision & engage multiple disciplines and academic departments at Case in the fields of organizational behavior, health systems management and policy, economics, entrepreneurship, physics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and integrative medicine to collaboratively design new courses at Case. Together with educational partners, the new classes and experiential learning activities will transform and empower the learner to become a more effective contributor to a new society in NEO and the world.
Hypothesis:
Human beings are a wholistic integration of the spirit, mind, emotions, and body. Life is an integration and harmony of these elements working together to create a whole human life. Human Health is a function of Human Life. To design positive health, we must design positive life across all important realms.
When we invest and direct our energies with conscious care and attention to design a life that is perfectly aligned with the greatest harmony of these integrated dimensions, we help ourselves and educate those around us to design wholistic lives and health. Thus we contribute to the wellbeing of citizens of wholistic, healthy, and evolved communities.
Health means balance and harmony and positive energy and an ability to contribute at higher levels of innovation and benefit to society.
Vision: To unify interdisciplinary research from childhood development, to adolescence, to adulthood, to gerontological studies to create a positive picture of life and health across age groups various genders, ethnicities, cultures, professions, and communities to create a balanced wholistic picture of human health.
Possibility to design educational offerings:
I. Multi-dimensional Research:
Conduct longitudinal studies via BAWB worldwide. Conduct basic and applied research implementing the AI methodology to individual life and health principles and applying EI grounded research and its aspect of incorporating 360-degree feedback to design and enhance an image of human health. Work can build on the initial design of the Valeo Initiative looking to identify what brings positive life and health to a human being.
Build on existing related research conducted historically (Dr. Adler) and nationwide by faculty members applying positive psychology theory, (Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania), universities like Benedictine and Pepperdine and others.
Furthermore an extension and application of AI and EI methodology might be directed with an inward process to discover what is ethical behavior at its best and what is integrity at its best by study the highest moments of self-expression and conduct. This concept proof can lead to new innovative understanding for managers to apply corporate responsibility principles.
II. Educational Programs (classroom and distance learning vehicles)
· Case curriculum offered to undergraduates, graduates, staff, alumni, and community
· Educational Programs for: Body, Mind, Emotions, and Spirit
· Arts: Music, Dance, Theatre, Visual, Culinary, Sculpture & Special Mediums
· Life and Career Balance for Men, for Women, for Both
· Family, Parenting, and Early Childhood Development to Successful Aging (including classes in Learning, Beauty, Wisdom, and Wellness, etc.)
· Integrating the Cognitive Sciences with the Social Sciences for Career Enhancement
· Integrative programs for management and medicine
i. Teaching and applying AI and EI philosophies to physicians, nurses, and medical administrators and help them to develop a wholistic view of the organization to which they belong, the role of the patient and families as agents of healing (within CASE community and affiliated partners)
ii. Managing Health By Design Series - teaching managers to apply holistic thinking to positively affect their lives by learning to manage stress and contribute creatively to their work environment; outline role of prevention and maintenance to create a healthy workforce
· University & Community health programs
i. University extended health wellness programs for the community, applying the AI & AI methodologies to health and wellness, as well as focusing on the role of integrative medicine.
ii. Study the role of positive thinking and wellness for prolonging life
· Innovative Leadership training for health care executives and physicians of the 21st century
i. teaching health care leaders emotional intelligence skills, spiritual intelligence skills and applying management principles of ethics by directing an inner approach to the AI methodology
· Family Business Health
i. managing healthy relationships with family members where the next generation can effectively incorporate their own career choices with their responsibilities to a family business
ii. apply management communication and career building skills with health management skills to create healthy relationships with all members of organization (360 degree approach) where personal goals are openly discussed and shared with organization and implemented with work
· Corporate Training Courses on Wellness and Prevention of Human Resource Executives - through Dively Programs
· Corporate Training Courses applying AI to Creativity to spark innovation at corporations and organizations - through Dively Programs
II. Online Positive Life & Health Portal - Virtual Global Community
· Inspired by Appreciative Inquiry Commons[3], Positive Learning Network, University Circle Advanced Technology Commons, Netwellness, REI's wiki[4], RealNEO[5], OrgNet's In-Flow[6], and other interactive social networking and connectivity tools to co-design a positive health and life central portal for unifying communications. (national benchmarks may include WebMD)
· And Taos Institute, The Corporation for Positive Change, Appreciative Inquiry Partners, Barrett and Associates, The Center for Narrative Studies and Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, Executive Edge, Imagine Chicago, ND Learning, and The Positive Change Corps, and others.
· This online portal, designed at CASE, would serve as a central repository as well as a channel for communication. The Positive Life & Health portal collects together the best stories about health, wellness, and healing, from all organizations that participate as members, including universities, health care centers, corporations, federal, state, and municipal agencies, non-profit organizations, and others both nationally and globally. Members can contribute content as well as pay for educational services.
The portal would collect positive stories and breakthroughs, provide diagnostic resources, and deliver customized health information drawing from a comprehensive database that is continuously updated and expanded.
The health portal may be an extended application of the Business As An Agent of World Benefit Initiative to construct an online positive learning network for corporations to house the best golden innovations in business and apply the concept to golden innovations in human health.
IV. Possibility to create new educational & wellness visitor center by the Lakefront in Downtown Cleveland
Envisioned possibility to create a new learning and wellness visitor center by the lakefront, whose design and development would be supported by CASE and WSOM. This may involve a possible extension of the CASE learning campus to include a partnership with the city, county, State of Ohio, and others to construct a new and attractive learning and applied services sustainable facility to attract visitors from all over the world. The new facilities would help to increase the visibility of CASE and enhance its partnership with the City of Cleveland. The new center might be constructed with the imaginative help of Weatherhead's innovative home, The Peter B. Lewis Building's designer, Architect Frank Gehry. The newest and latest technologies can be incorporated into the design and apply solar power panels to a dome-shaped building that would house multiple foyers as teaching and clinical areas.
This collaborative university-city learning environment would be enhanced through the educational contributions of CASE and affiliated partners and special courses would be offered to corporations, visiting groups, and other organizations, as well as individuals who wish to sign up for courses.
Here new visiting professors from around the world would have an opportunity to conduct rotational research programs and teach on what brings life and health. Actual clinical services for wellness education and therapy may be incorporated into program offerings.
A wellness center incorporated with the new campus extension may attract families and children. Furthermore an innovation and creativity center can be housed at the new facility to support open-source economic development activities. Additional learning programs can be incorporated for instance courses on green urbanism, eco-cities, civic leadership and integrate this aspect through the university sponsorship.
The new facility may house as many as 500 people. Financing models may include regional collaborative investments and may involve the support of state agencies, foundations, corporations, and individual donors.
Envisioned Initiative Partners at:
Case Western Reserve University
· Institute for the Study of the University in Society
· One Cleveland
· Cognitive Sciences Center
· School of Medicine
· Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing
· Center for Science, Health, and Society
· Mandel Center for Non-Profit Organizations
· CASE Center for Collegiate Behavioral Health
· Center for Adolescent Health
· University Center for Innovations in Teaching and Education (UCITE)
· The University Center on Aging and Health
· Schubert Center for Child Development
· Center for Research on Tibet
· John Glenn Biomedical Engineering Consortium
· Childhood Studies
· Women's Studies Center
· The Law-Medicine Center
· Center for Policy Studies
· Office of University Public Affairs
· The Fairhill Center: The Intergenerational School & Integrative Studies
Case-Weatherhead School of Management
· Appreciative Inquiry, Center for BAWB & Positive Learning Network
(And other AI partners: URI, AIC, The Valeo Initiative, HeartMath, Imagine Chicago, Positive Psychology, Voices of Hope in Media, and others)
· Health Systems Management Center
· The Physician Executive Institute
· Miller Center for Entrepreneurship
· Weatherhead Connection
· Advanced Technology Commons
· Center for Regional Economics Issues
University Circle Incorporated Member Institutions
· Children's Museum of Cleveland
· Cleveland Museum of Natural History
· Cleveland Music School Settlement
· Cleveland Psychoanalytic Society
· Gestalt Institute of Cleveland
· Judson Retirement Community
· Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation
· University Hospitals of Cleveland
· Dittrick Medical History Center & Museum
· Health Space Cleveland
And others…
Universities Collaborative
TeamNEO
Greater Cleveland Partnership
The Cleveland Clinic
City of Cleveland
Cuyahoga County Commissioners
Cleveland Community Centers
Civic Organizations
Media Channels
Other national partners will be identified at universities and other identified strategic partner organizations.
Phase I: Initial concept feasibility testing and definition
· Conduct longitudinal studies to determine utility of concept to higher education in national and global organizations.
· Convene focus groups and discussions with university, health and health care experts, and civic leaders to discuss and test the concepts and implications to the process with which they access, utilize, deliver, and apply health information.
Objectives:
Phase I: Vision and Planning (two-year horizon):
· Develop comprehensive business plan to discuss the interconnectivity of research initiatives, educational programs, and clinical services and seek and develop partners and investors in the business, social sciences, medical school and nursing schools and other partners at CASE and Cleveland communities
· Implement inter-disciplinary programs for medical students, practicing physicians and for managers through joint courses, seminars, and workshops, and keep track of results and impact through selected effectiveness metrics.
· Begin development of technology to support future Positive Life and Health Portal
Phase II: Budget, Costs & Sources of Funding for a Positive Life & Health Center
· Tentative budget for a virtual global community for the Positive Life & Health center is $500-$750,000.
· Tentative budget for constructing a new facility for the Positive Life & Health Center is approximately $90 million, including the cost of the building, consulting fees, supplemental fees, bidding costs, furniture and equipment, and other contingency costs. A staff would be calculated separately. This building will be designed with a sustainability perspective and will include new research technology from Case.