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Excitement is building about two new programs at Maharishi University of Management that reflect the school's mission to provide practical skills, a quality education, and enlightened values. The Enlightened Media and Performing Arts program starts classes in September, and the new College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine began classes this February. Together, they will give students not only the training but also real experience necessary to lead in their fields.
Enlightened Media
The Enlightened Media and Performing Arts program adds three new areas of emphasis to the Fine Arts major: Enlightened Theater Arts, Enlightened Film, and Video Arts, as well as a new personalized program in Enlightened Intermedia Arts.
"The program focuses on producing original and uplifting material--material with a positive message," says Gurdy Leete, assistant professor of visual technologies and one of the designers of the program. "We have been very bold about what we are doing in putting the word 'enlightened' in the name of our program. So people have to know that they won't be coming here to make a monster movie."
The Enlightened Theater Arts degree covers playwriting, theater history, costume history and design, acting, directing, and production. Enlightened Film and Video Arts covers screenwriting, film history, photography, video production, lighting, videography, computer animation and effects, and digital editing. Advanced students may take additional courses delving deeply into one area to receive a B.F.A., with faculty permission. The Enlightened Intermedia program is only available at the B.F.A. level and involves a Fine Arts major, plus a minor from another area and some intermedia technologies courses. The students receive their B.F.A. upon completion of a body of artistic work that successfully integrates both areas of study.
The program will emphasize not only preparing for your career but actually getting started in it. In play production, students will give public performances, while other students will publish their scripts. Students will gain experience in the new career opportunities that are quickly becoming available--the Internet, home video, digital media. "The explosive growth in these areas guarantees their importance in the communications-intensive world of tomorrow," Leete says. "This is the world that these students will lead."
To ensure this, theater students have access to both Spayde Theatre, which holds approximately 250, and the Student Union Theatre, a flexible space for informal and intermedia productions. Other students have access to high-end Macintosh OS and Windows NT computers, and even Silicon Graphics workstations. Because Maharishi University of Management is on a block system where students take one class at a time, students in the digital media areas are assigned their own computers, providing unequalled computer access.
Gurdy Leete's lab just received 15 new Macintosh OS PowerCenter 180 computers. These provide "a state-of-the-art platform for doing computer art, computer animation, special effects, digital editing, and computer-based music recording and synthesis," Leete says. These computers, combined with the Silicon Graphics machines, allow the students to use Softimage 3D Extreme Effects and other graphics and intermedia programs used in movies and by professionals.
Using these powerful tools, students can participate in one of three digital-media programs: digital video, digital music, and visual technologies. Visual technologies includes computer art, graphic design, digital photography, interactive media, 2-D and 3-D animation, Internet media design, and digital special effects.
When students complete the undergraduate program, they will have access to existing graduate programs in video, digital special effects, 2-D animation, and interactive media such as Internet media through the Visual Technologies degree. There is also a separate 3-D computer animation program.
"We believe that these programs will create a new generation of writers, directors, performers, and producers whose works will fill the world with joy and amazement," Leete says. "These kinds of artists are deeply needed to change modern culture. We have a new message for the world, and we are going to use powerful media to get that message out."
Human Physiology
Also bringing a new message to the world, Dr. Robert Schneider, dean of the new College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, feels that modern medicine is in a crisis. Prescription drugs can be as harmful as the diseases they treat. Latrogenic diseases, those caused by medical treatment, are on the rise. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 40 percent of all Americans, nearly 100 million people, suffer from chronic diseases. Those diseases with the highest mortality rates, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, are caused or seriously impacted by mental, behavioral, or environmental factors that are not fully addressed by modern medicine. At the February 3rd inauguration of the new medical program, University President Dr. Bevan Morris spoke of the need for better medical care in America. "Today, young people in modern medical schools are being trained as illness providers."
The new medical program trains consultants to look at imbalances that cause disease, not merely the symptoms of disease. The goal is prevention of all disease, resulting in perfect health. "It is our responsibility to see that the health of the nation is properly managed," Schneider says. Students gain the knowledge necessary to identify imbalances in mind, body, behavior, and environment that will lead to illness down the road. Recommendations for treating these imbalances will head off the disease before it starts, or counteract it once it has appeared.
The curriculum of the Maharishi Vedic Medical program brings five essential values of knowledge into the main body of modern medicine.
First is consciousness. Hundreds of research studies, at more than 200 institutions around the world, have documented the health benefits of technologies of consciousness, specifically, the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi program. These studies document effects such as the reversal of aging, relief from hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases, reduced substance abuse, and reduced psychological distress, among other benefits.
Pulse diagnosis and related approaches of diet, herbal preparations, and daily and seasonal routines are the second value. Two more values are "near and extended environmental health." Near environment means the places where one lives and works. Recent scientific research shows that building orientation and location, and a person's position inside the building, influence brain functioning. For example, cells within the thalamus function as a "neural compass" because they display a firing pattern that depends on the direction one is facing. Maharishi Sthapatya Veda architecture is a science that maximizes the potential of a building's inhabitants. Reported health benefits from proper environment include freshness in body and mind, more rewarding behavior, and greater success in daily life.
The extended environment refers to the cosmos. The relationship between the human physiology and the surrounding world is clearly evidenced in biological rhythms, such as the cycles of day and night, monthly cycles that affect production of chemicals by the nervous system, and the production of hormones. Maharishi's Vedic Science explains that the internal structures of the body reflect the structure of the universe, each having its counterpart in the cosmos, such as the sun, moon, planets, and stars. Ideal health comes when the individual is in harmony with the cosmos. This knowledge is available through the technology of Maharishi Jyotish, which covers detection and maximization of environmental influences.
Finally, there is the collective health of society. Maharishi Vedic Medicine promotes good health of the community and nation by removing stress and creating balance in collective consciousness. This is accomplished through group practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi program, which have been documented in over 40 studies to reduce crime, accidents, and illness on city, national, and even global levels, through the Maharishi Effect.
The four-year undergraduate program trains health educators and health-care consultants who work with physicians. Graduates will have career-oriented training in all five areas of health. They will be able to teach courses on the Transcendental Meditation technique, Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, and Maharishi Sthapatya Veda. As consultants they will advise physicians in the areas of diet, daily and seasonal routines, and Maharishi Ayur-Veda herbal preparations. And they will coordinate with experts on Maharishi Sthapatya Veda and Maharishi Jyotish to prevent disease, promote good health, and create life-supporting influences in all areas of life.
The four-year doctoral program adds the capability to act as private natural health-care practitioners, if state and federal laws permit it in their area of residence. Students at this level will graduate with a comprehensive understanding of the processes and treatment of imbalances that are the basis of disease through the perspectives of Vedic Anatomy and Vedic Physiology, as well as modern physiology, pathology, and therapeutics. Abilities at this level are an expansion of those at the undergraduate level.
Each year of the program involves at least two months of internship or field work, giving the students over a year of practice in their field at the time of graduation. Students will leave not only trained but already experienced healthcare practitioners.
Trained and experienced--key ingredients for a graduate of Maharishi University of Management. The university's new name was engendered, in part, by a desire to emphasize the application of knowledge and to train leaders. These two programs are a visionary step in the right direction.
For more information on these new programs, call the Maharishi University of Management Office of Admissions at (515) 472-1110.
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