Ignite. Inspire. Innovate and don’t forget to relax, Goldie Hawn reminds a TC audience’’

Not all of us are going to be scien­tists who change the world — so we need to create a group of people who can behave in a civil fashion, who can share and care and can have empathy, and reach down inside themselves and find optimism. So why aren’t we teaching kids about their brains?”

Speaking at TC’s Academic Festival in April, the Academy Award-winning actress and children’s advocate Goldie Hawn urged incorporating mindfulness training and education into classroom culture.

 Hawn’s keynote speech highlighted an event headlined “Ignite. Inspire. Innovate.” that drew 1,000-plus alumni, current and newly admitted students. The day included alumni honors for Mildred Garcia (Ed.D. ’87), President of California State University-Fullerton; Anne Gayles-Felton (M.A. ’47), Professor Emerita of the College of Education at Florida A&M University; William Howe (Ed.D. ’91), the State Title IX Coordinator and Education Consultant for Multicultural Education at the Connecticut State Depart­ment of Education; Christine Lee Kim-Eng (Ed.D. ’92), Head of the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Academic Group in Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE); and Robert Sherman (M.A. ’53), the longtime voice of WQXR, New York’s premier classical music station. Mul­ticulturalist Monisha Bajaj (Ed.D. ’05), of the University of San Francisco, received TC’s 2015 Early Career Award.

Panel discussions ranged from the benefits of strength-train­ing exercise to a reconsideration of the late TC adult learning theorist Jack Mezirow (see page 59).

Ultimately, mindfulness infused the day. Professor Karen Froud, Director of TC’s Neurocognition of Lan­guage Lab, and her doctoral student Trey Avery (M.S. ’12), described their research on the impact of mindfulness practices on the brain. Lisa Miller, Professor of Psychology & Education, urged parents to consider the power of spiri­tuality in raising their children. And Hawn, whose founda­tion has created MindUp™, a program now used by 700,000 children around the world, spoke of a high-pressure era in which “we put more and more books on kids’ backs.”

“We don’t have to pop pills into children,” Hawn said, to a standing ovation. “Instead we need to give them tools to move through depression and fear.” tc.edu/festival