[Dialogue] Wisdom University Vision

[LAURELCG@aol.com]

This is from Jim Garrison, president of Wisdom Univ., formerly The University 
of Creation Spirituality, for your information.  They also sent a 14-page 
prospectus. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll pass it on.
Blessings,
Jann McGuire, D.Min., UCS, 2001 


Dear Friends,


As our 2005 academic year comes to a close, I want to thank all of 

you for your sincere interest in and concern for Wisdom University 

over the past four months since I joined as President. I come to you 

in a spirit of optimism and hope about our future. On July 1, we 

will begin the new academic year with a new budget, a newly 

integrated curriculum, and new intensives, faculty and programs.


I would like to share with you a preview of what is in store for us 

as we move ahead, and I ask you for your continued direct 

involvement and support. 


I have attached for your information and consideration a Prospectus 

on our long term plans as a university, which, if I had to distill 

into a single phrase, would be to build a "global learning 

community."  The headlines are as follows:


•  We have established a strategic partnership with the Institute of 

Noetic Sciences to have future west coast intensives in residence at 

Noetic's  200 acre campus in Petaluma, CA. Students, alumni, faculty 

and staff have all indicated that residential settings enhance the 

transformative nature of our curriculum.  The Sept 9-11 weekend 

intensive with Caroline Myss and the October 24-28 week intensive 

will be held at the Noetic campus.


•  We have also established strategic partnerships with the Omega 

Institute and the Open Center of New York to co-develop new 

programming, and will inaugurate this partnership with a weekend 

intensive at the New York Open Center featuring Matthew Fox, Andrew 

Harvey and Caroline Myss discussing "Mystical Activism in a Post 

Modern World" December 9-11.  


•  We have begun a teach-out of our MLA program accredited by Naropa 

University and are establishing our own new Masters Degree in Wisdom 

Studies (license pending) which will be modeled after the DMIN 

program. So for the first time in the history of the university, we 

will have a unified curriculum.


• As we move forward we have added weekend Intensives and 

pilgrimages to the schedule while enhancing the current curriculum 

with new courses and new instructors.  We will no longer have 

separate MA and DMIN programs with different credits, different 

requirements and different schedules.  Beginning in July we will 

simply offer a series of Intensives each month.  A Masters degree 

will require seven Intensives.  A Doctor of Ministry degree will 

require ten Intensives.  A combined Masters/Doctors program will 

require fifteen Intensives. 

 

•  We have started a new ordination program that just completed its 

first intensive June 13-17.  By all accounts, it was a spectacular 

success. Unlike other ordinations, which train ministers in specific 

traditions, our ordination program is designed to ordain you in 

whatever work you are doing that you hold as sacred. As far as we 

know, our ordination program is completely unique.


•  We have established Mystics Without Monasteries – the Chairs of 

Wisdom University, wisdom teachers widely respected who we have 

gathered to be part of our expanding Wisdom Global Grid.  Our Chairs 

are: 


Matthew Fox (Creation Spirituality)

Andrew Harvey (Mystical Activism) 

Peter Kingsley (Primordial Wisdom) 

Caroline Myss (Energy Medicine and the Healing Arts) 

Rupert Sheldrake (Evolutionary Science)


We will soon post on our website a class listing for the new 

academic year. You will note that each of our chairs is scheduled to 

teach in the upcoming academic year. Caroline Myss, for example, is 

scheduled to offer a weekend intensive in Petaluma September 9-11 

on "Channeling Grace."


•  We have launched a program in Mystical Activism, a program that 

blends immersion in sacred practices with hands-on social activism, 

enriching both the student's interior journey and their service in 

the larger world.   We offer this program as an expression of hope 

and optimism about what motivated individuals can accomplish.  We 

launch this program September 30 -- October 13 with an intensive in 

France visiting mystical Paris and the Mary Magdalene and Black 

Madonna sites with Andrew Harvey and Apela Colorado.  Other 

pilgrimages will be announced soon. 


•  We have launched a Center for the Study of Religious 

Fundamentalism designed to conduct research, publish White Papers, 

convene seminars and conferences, and seek actively to inform the 

public both in the United States and abroad about the internal 

logic, political power and ultimate objectives of fundamentalist 

groups, with specific initial focus on the evangelical Christian 

right in the United States but also, over time, to include research 

on fundamentalist groups around the world. 


•  We have a strengthened and more cohesive Board with student 

representation and a new Chairman, Walter Link, who is committed to 

building a wisdom civilization and leadership training programs that 

will enhance the potency of the university.


•  We are discussing the development of an Alumni Circle that will 

have a dynamic presence on our web site and serve to coordinate 

alumni activities.  Beginning in the Fall, I will be traveling 

around the country to visit our students and alumni clustered in the 

Seattle/Portland area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boulder/Denver, 

Ashville/Washington, and New York/Boston. I look forward to having 

discussions and personally meeting as many of you as I can.


•  We have put in place a constitutional system of governance for 

the university's academic programs that includes a Faculty Circle, 

three faculty committees, an Academic Council and norms and 

procedures to ensure democratic and transparent decision making.


•  On July 1, we are moving our administrative and financial offices 

from our downtown Oakland campus to an office just below the Golden 

Gate Bridge in the Presidio of San Francisco. The program staff will 

continue to work in our current campus in Oakland through mid 

August, and we will hold our July 25-29 and August 1-5 intensives in 

Oakland, as well. 

 

All these endeavors have been initiated in just a few short months 

and all have been implemented with full Board support and with the 

integral involvement of Matthew Fox, who is part of the 

collaborative leadership team of the university along with Carman 

Melendrez, our COO and CFO, Walter Link, our new Board Chairman, and 

myself. We are all moving in the same direction and setting in 

motion a series of relationships, degree programs, as well as the 

financial and administrative disciplines, necessary to build a 

sustainable university that aspires to be a global learning 

community.


Details on all these plus other programs are either available on our 

website, or soon will be, at www.WisdomUniversity.org.  


Please know, that as we close the current year we are in the black, 

having paid all our bills and having some in the bank to start the 

new fiscal year.  


Our operating budget for the next year, beginning in July, 2005, is 

$833,000.  Of this, roughly $533,000 or 65% is expected to come in 

from tuition, fees (calculated at an average of twenty-two students 

per month taking intensives) plus merchandise and bookstore sales.  

This means that we will have to raise an additional $300,000 or 35% 

from contributions.   This is substantially different from most 

institutions of higher learning in which the standard is usually one 

third of the budget coming from tuition and fees and two thirds 

coming from donations. 


Our intent over this next year is to move beyond the model of 

constantly requiring donations to survive. With effective marketing, 

combined with compelling programming, we intend to operate on a 

model whereby we earn the money we are spending. Our plan is to run 

the university entirely on tuition and fees, plus the money earned 

from bookstore and merchandise sales. This will allow us to use the 

contributions that come in to either build an endowment and/or to 

enhance various programs and expansions. 


By July 1, 2006, therefore, our intent is to bring in enough in 

tuition and fees to completely sustain a $987,000 budget.  This will 

require forty-four students per month participating in our 

intensives, which means a doubling in our student enrollment.  

Having just graduated over fifty students, we now have roughly 150 

students enrolled in the university and, as mentioned, we are 

attracting about twenty-two students per intensive.  This means that 

the single greatest priority this next year is the effective 

marketing of our university and our programs with the initial goal 

of doubling the number of students attending our intensives in the 

next twelve months.  This will give us a small but self sustaining 

budget.  


You can actively help us accomplish our goals of self sufficiency 

and expansion by taking two very important actions: 

 

You can help recruit students.  Nobody knows the university and its 

transformative programming like you do and nothing works better than 

word of mouth.  If we double our student enrollment, we become self 

sustaining.  


The second action is to contribute toward the $300,000 we need in 

contributions for the upcoming school year.  Any size contribution 

is welcome.


Please know that I am happy to discuss any of the above points with 

you directly and personally. Since I came on board, I have tried to 

answer personally each and every communication.  I welcome your 

feedback and would be glad to receive an email at 

jgarrison at WisdomUniversity.org and we can email each other or set up 

a call. 


Remember the phoenix. We are rising anew and the future, still 

developing and highly potentiated, is bright.


I look forward to hearing from you and to continuing to keep you 

updated. 


Warm Regards,


Jim