Perhaps you have read about Bhutan and its measurement of Gross National Happiness an idea that definitely has my support. At a recent visit to Technologico de Monterrey in Mexico as well as its sister institution Universidad TecMilenio, I was somewhat surprised to find that they have taken institutional ownership of the concept of happiness in a serious way. A brief search on happiness reveals a mixture of results from fairly serious articles on positive psychology to some shall we say less peer reviewed views on what makes for happy people. However, no doubt that many people are taking the whole concept of happiness very seriously indeed.
Tec Milenio deals with the concept of happiness by applying the basic principles of positive psychology using the ideas of Martin Seligman, a pioneer of positive psychology. His five PERMA building blocks are:
- Positive emotions – feeling good
- Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
- Relationships – being authentically connected to others
- Meaning – purposeful existence
- Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success
At TecMilenio, they have also added Mindfulness and Physical Wellbeing for a total of seven building blocks via work done in their own Institute of the Science of Happiness. These blocks are then infused into the curriculum by trained faculty (through their own certificate in fundamentals of positive psychology) and mandatory seminars/webinars, workshops and networking events for students.
In addition, all students are required to two ethics courses, an entrepreneurship course and a citizenship course as well as complete 240 hours of community service and 240 hours of work integrated learning.
The new undergraduate curriculum at Tec de Monterrey is what they describe at the T shaped – broad at the top and then deep. The first three semesters are broad and contain complex “integrated challenges” then the last 5 semesters are more specialized with the whole curriculum being competency-based. The integrated challenges are truly remarkable – one week challenges that students in teams complete involving a problem with a community or local business – they are difficult to prepare and given the size of the institution (24 campuses and 55,000 students) they need to prepare a large number of problems every year.
TecMilenio has truly embraced the positive psychology principles. Tec de Monterrey is moving more cautiously but completely revamping its curriculum as this is written via its Tec21 initiative.
I believe that both these institutions are taking risks and carving out a truly different undergraduate experience for their students.