When the news broke at the World Happiness Summit in Miami, Fla., the crowd cheered, the boldface names gave glad speeches, and future students started filling out their applications.
Tal Ben-Shahar, a co-founder of the online Happiness Studies Academy, had found his happy place: a small liberal arts university in Hackettstown, NJ.
Centenary University, with 1,100 undergraduate students and 830 graduate students, would be the home of the world’s first master’s program in Happiness Studies. In the 12 days since the announcement, 86 people have applied for the 18-month, $17,700 program.
Happiness Studies extend beyond the field of positive psychology, the discipline focusing on human flourishing. The predominantly on-line curriculum will incorporate psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, economics, theology, literature, music, and other disciplines and explore spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional well-being.
Students will examine techniques including meditation, goal setting, yoga, physical exercise, breathwork, different forms of journaling, according to the master’s program brochure. The coursework is intended less for recent college graduates than for mid-career business leaders, counselors, human resources specialists, and others who could apply such concepts to their work.
Ben-Shahar, who taught a course on positive psychology at Harvard that attracted more than 800 students in 2006, said he fell in love the second he arrived at Centenary. While Columbia University, where he recently taught, Harvard, and the University of Miami had been logical options as a home for a master’s program, he had been looking for a flexible, nimble partner, a description that has fit Centenary throughout its history, he said.
The institution opened in 1867 as a co-ed prep school, then became a girls’ prep school, a women’s junior college, a women’s four-year college, a co-ed four-year college, and, in 2016, a university.
“Centenary has tried to adapt and adjust and meet the needs of students and the community,” said Bruce Murphy, the university’s president. After a downward enrollment trend from 2014 to 2020, the school welcomed the chance for a new program that could attract so many applicants so quickly. The hope is for 100 students to begin the program in October.
“We see that as strengthening the brand, helping us get our name out there,” Murphy said. While he admitted he was “a little skeptical at first,” he said he became convinced that the Master’s of Happiness Studies would be a practical degree.
Keith Morgen, associate professor of counseling at Centenary, has worked on the curriculum, which the Middle States Commission on Higher Education approved.
“It’s the right program at the right time,” he said, noting how the pandemic has created a marked emphasis on well-being and quality of life in every discipline. “There’s going to be a need for people who have the scholarly training to be able to think about and discuss and work on issues relevant to the human experience.”
It might be difficult to imagine seminars about joy, attended by graduate students who are not known for their euphoria, faced with low pay, high levels of competition, and difficulty finding work after school. Research warned of a mental health crisis among graduate students before the pandemic, and their levels of depression and anxiety soared in its midst.
Ben-Shahar said he wished he could remove academic pressure from the program. “If I had it my way, there would be no grades,” he said. “The ideal university is where all are intrinsically motivated. But to get accreditation, we need to grade.”
So while there will be some struggle for those who enroll, it will help them understand their topic better.
“One of the first lessons we teach is that a happy life is not devoid of pain, suffering, disappointment, and struggles,” Ben-Shahar said. “On the contrary, the first step towards happiness is allowing in unhappiness.”
Particularly now, amid pandemic, a war, a warming climate, and less than cordial political discourse, human well-being deserves careful study.
“It’s not just important when things are going well,” he said. “It helps us become more resilient, and it provides us with tools to deal with normal vicissitudes as well as challenges.”
He is optimistic that graduates of the program will be able to apply their skills in their own lives and the lives of their families, organizations, students, patients, and clients.
“Everything they learn will have practical value,” he said.
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Tina Kelley may be reached at tkelley@njadvancemedia.com.
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