Living Schools Symposium

The Living Schools symposium is an event being held in collaboration with Dawson College that will explore the intersection of sustainability and happiness. The event will kick off with Catherine O’Brien who will be talking about the concept of Sustainable Happiness. This will follow with a presentation by Chris Adam, the Sustainability coordinator at Dawson College and co-creator of this symposium, who will discuss his own work on transforming his campus into an educational institution built on the attributes of a living school.  

In the afternoon, two speakers will lay down the “blueprints” on how they’re helping to turn Concordia into a Living School. The speakers will be Professor Satoshi Ikeda and Lorie Kloda. Lorie will discuss the vision that guided the remaking of the downtown library as a space that promotes both mental health and sustainability and how the two intersected. Justice also being directly linked to well-being and happiness, Professor Ikeda will be talking about cultivating student agency (in environmental advocacy)  and on his latest project –the transformation of Concordia University into a carbon-capturing institution.  Following these two talks, all invited participants will discuss what more can be done to redefine schools as Living Schools.

In short, this symposium looks to explore how positive psychology grows out of an ethos of sustainability: an angle that is often overlooked.