To help meet a long-term goal of increasing the number of teachers and educational resources available to under-served Tibetan communities, the Conservancy has helped support the work of ground-breaking educational programs like the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, which offers groups of Tibetan monks and nuns specially-developed courses, designed and led by scientists and science educators, giving these young scholars a chance to see how modern science looks at the world — in the field, the lab and the classroom — learning directly about the methods, tools and ways of teaching modern scientific inquiry.
The Emory-TIbet Science Initiative’s innovative program builds on and reinforces its work, in partnership with the Institute for Buddhist Dialectics, and the Library for Tibetan Works and Archives, to create a comprehensive Tibetan language science education curriculum — along with a suite of culturally-supportive, Tibetan-English language science textbooks and education materials in subjects ranging from neuroscience and biology to physics — using a new science lexicon in the Tibetan language created to translate modern scientific terms.
Emory-Tibet Science Initiative student with a sample taken on a science field trip; ETSI students working with new Tibetan-language science textbooks, and learning to use science applications on computers.
Taken together, these programs are a far-reaching response to priorities His Holiness the Dalai Lama has long held: incorporating science education into the core curriculum for Tibetan monastics, and nourishing a dialogue and cross-fertilization between science and spirituality. And their success is critical to achieving a long-term goal identified by the Conservancy’s Himalayan community needs assessment project:
laying the groundwork for a new generation of Tibetan Buddhist monastic and lay teachers, who are committed to returning to their communities and sharing their knowledge — able to help children in remote, under-served Tibetan cultural areas obtain the vital educational opportunities they currently lack.
Monastic students trained through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative giving Tibetan refugee children hands-on demonstrations using exhibits about the brain, hearing, the physics of sound and other projects created for an Initiative-sponsored science fair.