Promoting Human Unity

Overview

Study abroad in Auroville, an international community along the tropical coast of southern India dedicated to promoting human unity. Participate in an academic program that fosters collaborative inquiry, critical thinking, and dialogue while exploring daily awareness practices such as yoga, non-violent communication, and meditation.

Through engagement with a holistic approach to world issues that encompasses inner, cultural, and outer processes, you broaden and deepen your understanding of sustainability issues. Opportunities to learn about and have hands on experience with habitat restoration, local organic food production, teaching in local schools, working with village action groups and more helps students build a growing theoretical and practical understanding of issues relating to local and global sustainability.

Empower yourself and learn to empower others through a process whereby what you learn is integrated with how you live.

Highlights
	Explore Auroville, home to one of the world’s most successful eco-reforestation efforts, the Center for Renewable Energy, and an extremely productive tropical habitat restored from ecological disaster Read more about Auroville’s integrated green practices here.
	Engage in service learning that benefits local communities. Opportunities include: performing habitat restoration, interning at an organic farm, teaching in a village school, and working with village action groups to build understanding of local and global sustainability issues
	Overnight at Sri Ramanamaharshi’s Ashram and climb Arunchala Mountain, locally believed to be the body of the Hindu God Shiva
	Experience a guided sacred solo at Honey Valley in the Coorg amidst verdant valleys, imposing mountains and teakwood forests

Expert faculty help students build skills in ecology habitat restoration and group facillitation through workshops, coursework ,seminars and internships which take place outdoors and offer transferable college credit. More photos »

Auroville as “Ecovillage”

was founded in 1968 with the intention of realizing human unity, and is now home to approximately 2,000 individuals from over 40 nations around the world. Vibrant community culture and its expertise in renewable energy systems, habitat restoration, ecology skills, mindfulness practices, and holistic education make Auroville one of the best places to study abroad in India.

Read More About Auroville »

Exploring the meditation gardens and sanctuary of the Auroville Matrimandir. More photos »

Courses

Group Dynamics (Comm 352) (4 cr.)
Learn to recognize and analyze the physical, social, economic, political, ethical, and spiritual elements that make up sustainable communities. Students build strong conceptual frameworks and have opportunities for real-world experience by developing a learning community and engaging with established host communities.

Global and Local Sustainable Living (Env. Design 592A) (4 cr.)
Study the role of human history, language, education, physical landscape, society, and world view on shaping human-place relations. Explore methods of strengthening these connections through use of ecological footprint analysis, ecological literacy, mindful awareness, community/societal action, and systems thinking.

Applications and Practices of Sustainable Living (Service Learning 397I) (4 cr.)
This field-based experience, combined with readings, dialogue, reflection and a project paper, introduces you to the history, methods, and meanings of sustainable development. Students select, implement, record, and evaluate an internship project in sustainable development during their ten-week stay in Auroville, India.

Body, Mind, and Spirit: Cultivating Personal Sustainability (Int’l Ed 292C) (4cr.)
Study the importance of worldviews and how they affect human behavior and the earth, and gain an appreciation for the historical role of religions and spirituality in creating culture. In addition to seminars, readings, reflective journaling, and discussion on philosophical and spiritual movements that link inner transformation with political and environmental action, this course explores how practices such as yoga and meditation, holistic health, and rituals expand perceptions about who we are and how we live.

Academic Credit
Earn 16 transferable credits through the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Find out about transferring credits to your home school »

Faculty

Bindu Mohanty – Spring Semester

Ph.D., Comparative Studies in Integral Yoga and Transpersonal Theories, CIIS
M.A., English Literature, University of Kentucky
B.A., English Literature, Sambalpur University

A writer and senior faculty, Bindu Mohanty has lived in Auroville since 1994. Committed to the practice of Integral Yoga, she believes that social change requires a radical transformation of the individual. She is passionate about promoting social justice and ecological sustainability in a globalized world through an integral and transdisciplinary approach to education. Her current research interests include interpersonal dynamics and social evolution.

Heather Reid – Fall Semester

Ph.Dc, Adult Education: Community, International and Transformative Learning, University of Toronto
M.A., Philosophy and Religion, California Institute of Integral Studies
B.A, English, Vassar College

Heather first joined the Living Routes faculty in 2006.  Her diverse background includes working with the International Institute of Global Education and UNICEF to facilitate an educational reform effort in
Central Asia, developing curriculum and assessing the impacts of an environmental educational initiative for schools in Toronto, and writing and presenting national radio documentaries for the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation.  Informed by feminist theory, environmental philosophy and depth psychology, her academic research explores the influences underlying the Western worldview that have led to the alienation from nature and from self, and how these may be redressed and transformed through participatory and embodied epistemologies.  As an educator, she draws on her training in movement-based expressive arts, wilderness rites-of-passage, and mindfulness practices to create spaces for deep personal and collective inquiry.  She is an associate of the Transformative Learning Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and the co-author of Circles of Transformation: Finding our Way in the “Great Work.”

Neil Meikleham – Fall Semester

Ph.D., Organic and Environmental Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
M.Sc., Holistic and Environmental Science, Schumacher College, UK
M.Sc., Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
B.Sc. (Hons), Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Neil is an environmental scientist and educator specializing in environmental chemistry, ecological restoration and design, plant propagation and horticulture.  In addition to being on the faculty of Living Routes, he has taught courses for the University of British Columbia, the University of the Witwatersrand, and Neal’s Yard Remedies (UK).  As an environmental consultant, Neil has implemented systems in integrated water management, biological monitoring, ecological design and wetland restoration, as well as conducted research into environmental science and climate change.  He has also consulted on several Auroville-initiated projects, including an ethnomedicinal forest and bioresource center, and a center for integrated bioregional water management.  Neil’s areas of interest include plant conservation, traditional ecological knowledge and ethnobotany, permaculture, participatory scientific methodologies, and exploring the complex interface of environmental and social justice.

Min Ameen – Winter Semester

MBA, Manchester Business School, Manchester, UK.
BS Mechanical Engineering, Vikram University, India

Min lives in Auroville, is actively engaged with the Sadhana community and works on issues relating to environment and sustainability on the local and national level. In addition to working at Auroville’s Center for Scientific Research (CSR), he is involved with projects throughout India ranging from carbon offsetting, sustainable development, influencing government policy and rural empowerment through renewable energy and awareness. Min is currently working with the Ministry of Renewable Energy in India to develop favorable policies that will accelerate solar water heater distribution throughout the country. He is also in the process of creating an Eco-Exhibition in Auroville, for up to 500,000 visitors a year, that will improve awareness about sustainability and developing a program to deploy solar energy solutions for lighting and pumping water in deprived regions of India.