More than a decade ago, Beauregard, who has taught sociology in CCS’s Liberal Arts department for nearly 20 years, noticed that her students weren’t showing much interest in the material. They seemed not only disengaged and preoccupied but also exhausted.

A longtime practitioner of transcendental meditation (TM), Beauregard wanted to integrate the technique into a CCS course. In 2011, “Consciousness, Creativity and Identity” became a reality and has since been wildly successful.

The innovative course — which integrates TM directly into core academic curriculum — garnered national attention and became the subject of a PBS documentary directed by alumna Chelsea Richer (’11, Entertainment Arts), Tuning the Student Mind (2015, 31 mins.). The documentary originally aired in 2016, premiered at the Detroit FREEP Film Festival and was nominated for a Social Media Impact Award.

Now a book, Tuning the Student Mind: A Journey in Consciousness-Centered Education (SUNY Press, 2020), follows Beauregard and CCS students over the course of a semester, weaving together personal stories, student writing and the author’s own insights on the transformative power of TM in the classroom.

For years, TM’s benefits were unknown to the general public and the practice was mistakenly assumed to be religious in nature. Steadily, however, scientific research has helped to illuminate the benefits of TM. Free of any belief system, transcendental meditation can help the mind-body system achieve a state of “restful alertness” that relieves stress, results in higher work efficiency, improves intelligence and cognitive performance, improves relationships and can even lower blood pressure.

Students in Beauregard’s course are given the tools to make an objective, scientific search for knowledge assisted by the subjective and experiential technique of meditation. They examine theoretical debates in the field while reflecting on how these conversations help construct their individual selves.

The book has been endorsed by Deepak Chopra, author Jack Miller, as well as Bob Roth of the David Lynch Foundation. The landscape around meditation has changed since Beauregard, who serves as the executive director of the Tuning the Student Mind Foundation, started teaching the course more than a decade ago. She continues to share her experiences and the course’s template with educators at the University of Michigan, The Medical School at the University of Arkansas, the Higher Learning Commission and various other colleges and universities across the country.

For more information on Tuning the Student Mind: A Journey in Consciousness-Centered Education, visit SUNY Press at sunypress.edu/p-6893-tuning-the-student-mind.aspx.

For more information on the CCS course and film, visit tuningthestudentmind.com.