Mindfulness and Education Working Group

Dr. Craig E. Richards, PhD
Dr Craig Richards is Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.  He is also Program coordinator for Education Leadership, and Director of the highly innovative Summer Principals Academy.  He has published six books and many research articles during his thirty-year career in higher education.  His most recent work in progress is a book on Self Leadership and Self Awareness Training.  He has practiced various forms of meditation and self awareness for more than thirty years and teaches 180 students self awareness in a five-week intensive every summer in New York City.



Lisa Miller, Ph.D.
Lisa Miller, Ph.D. is the Director of Clinical Psychology and Associate Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program.  Dr. Miller obtained her B.A. from Yale University and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied under Dr. Martin Seligman. Her research and scholarly interests are in spirituality and mind-body pathways to wellness, basic science at multiple levels of analysis on spirituality development, and prevention and treatment interventions for children and adolescents in poverty, increased access to treatment among low SES populations, intergenerational transmission of risk and resilience factors, and development of spirituality in children and adolescents. Dr. Miller's lab over the past fifteen years has been funded by a William T. Grant Faculty Scholars Award, an NIMH K-Award and a number of corporate and family foundations.  Dr. Miller received the Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award from American psychological Association and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. (Read New York Times features TC's Spirituality and Mind-Body Psychology Program, led by Dr. Miller.)

Sarah Sherman
Sarah Sherman is co-founder and co-president of the Mindfulness and Education Working Group (MEWG) at Columbia University’s Teachers College, a first of its kind faculty, student, and staff initiative that explores and promotes the role of mindfulness and contemplative practices in education through innovative interdisciplinary research, theory, and practice.  Her research interests are in service of deepening mind and body awareness to empower individuals to lead more fulfilling, meaningful and healthy lives.  She works with groups that cross both academic disciplines and administrative departments at TC, including adults with Aphasia, the Summer Principals Academy, Peace Corps, and the Office of Facilities Management.  She co-facilitates annual mindfulness retreats for professionals working in the Education Sector and leads a weekly meditation series at Teachers College.


Sarah received a B.F.A. with honors recognition from Rhode Island School of Design and an M.A. from Columbia University’s Teachers College.  Sarah has daily mindfulness and meditation practices, including qigong, yoga, and other contemplative techniques.  In addition, Sarah has lived for a month at a monastery in Taiwan and has walked spiritual pilgrimages including, El Camino de Santiago, Via Francigena, and Shvil Yisra'el.

Home H.C Nguyen
Home H.C. Nguyen is an educator, leadership consultant, and executive coach. Facilitating experiential and transformational learning, Home integrates mindfulness and contemplative practices with psychology and scholarly research. He coaches executives and teams, helping them develop insight in the midst of complexity, overcome anxiety, and develop resiliency.   He is adjunct faculty at Columbia University's Teachers College where he teaches Self-Awareness, Mindfulness and Contemplative practices to school principals, MBA students, psychotherapists, teachers, and aspiring leaders.  He received his BA from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and his doctoral research focuses on how leaders learn to deal with complexity and uncertainty through the practices of mindfulness meditation.  He is the co-founder and co-president of the Mindfulness and Education Working Group (MEWG) Teachers College.

Joe Levitan
Joe is currently the Director of Education and Development at The Sacred Valley Project, an educational non-profit located in the Urubamba Valley of Peru. Prior to this position Joe taught English Language Arts and Humanities in a Baltimore City Public School. Joe has a Masters degree in International Educational Development with a concentration in Peace Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University with high honors in philosophy and a minor in comparative religion. Joe has been meditating for over eight years, including time spent in monasteries in Japan and Thailand. He also co-facilitates annual mindfulness retreats, and spent a year facilitating a weekly meditation group at Teachers College.