Eureka has a novel approach to education and professional development in TM.
All Eureka events have integrated specific objectives to address increasing the attendees’ knowledge about TM, and improving their leadership, teaching and 21st century skill sets.
The courses have both large group interactive and small group sessions carefully designed to include the ‘hidden curriculum’. Didactic lecturing is not accepted into this section of the curriculum! Basically, the ‘hidden curriculum’ is all the stuff that happens in between the overt curriculum presentations, including interpersonal interactions, relationship building, and exchange of ideas through casual conversation or dining.
Eureka has an abiding faith in the notion that a key to human resilience is prosociality. The ‘hidden curriculum’ capitalizes on this human drive to create opportunities for students to exercise their verbal and nonverbal communications, their passions, their goals, and their experiences during these sliding door moments between formal sessions.
Examples of the sessions exemplifying the ‘hidden curriculum’ might include:
- A TM-based case-study run as a group exercise over multiple sessions. The aim of a Eureka case study is to develop critical thinking skills, identify one’s own knowledge and skills about TM, take on board the group’s combined knowledge and synthesize information from a variety of disciplines to explore TM medicine
- Group peer-to-peer mentoring, guided by a faculty member. Each participant presents their dilemma, and the group listens and helps the participant explore possible approaches to address their dilemma
- Speed consulting, where participants meet one on one with individual faculty members to discuss and relevant questions of the participant’s choosing
- A presentation workshop, aimed at developing excellent communication skills, including exploring how to observe and how to provide effective feedback