UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Blake Colaianne, assistant research professor at Penn State, is launching an eight-week course focusing on mindfulness and compassion for Pennsylvania high school students that is modeled after Penn State’s course on ‘The Art and Science of Human Flourishing.’

The course emphasizes the importance of the mind-body connection and draws on research in psychology, human development and contemplative practices, providing students with the tools to flourish in their day-to-day lives.  Students learn about four dimensions that lead to flourishing: awareness, connection, wisdom, and integration.

Fifty-five students in 13 school districts across Pennsylvania will take the course this fall, and Colaianne will measure outcomes from the course to demonstrate its impact on student mental health.

“Pennsylvania could become a leader in flourishing education.”

– Blake Colaianne, assistant research professor, Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center

Colaianne was a high school teacher when he realized how helpful mindfulness was to teens. His experience in the classroom —paired with national data that demonstrated mental health crisis among young people —signaled to him a need for change.

“We’ve normalized physical education, but what would we need to normalize mental education?” Colaianne said. “What if people got course credit, like gym class, for the academic study of human development and flourishing?”

In 2018, Colaianne was a graduate teaching assistant in Human Development and Family Studies 108N, “The Art and Science of Human Flourishing,” and has since taught the course at Penn State’s University Park campus. The course is now offered at several Penn State commonwealth campuses, as well as the University of Colorado Boulder. It will also launch in the spring at the University of Illinois.

For Colaianne, the goal is to launch this program into all Pennsylvania high schools, offering an evidence-based, preventative tool to help students flourish. He also hopes to create and fund an institute where educators are equipped to take specialized knowledge about mental health into their classrooms and implement evidence-based strategies to benefit adolescents.

“Pennsylvania could become a leader in flourishing education,” he said. “I wonder what it would be like to have flourishing education standards?”

This research study is funded by the Mental Research Institute. Research and course development have been made possible through grants and foundation support, allowing Colaianne to continue to advance mental health education for students across Pennsylvania.