Renée Crown Wellness Institute

Embracing that reality is foundational to promoting flourishing in higher education.

📖 Digital storytelling can open the way.

Digital storytelling offers a powerful way to elevate both individual and community perspectives. It blends narrative, reflection, and digital media to share experiences in accessible and creative forms.

➡️ More than a technical skill set, digital storytelling is a democratic practice.

It reclaims narrative power by amplifying voices that might otherwise be overlooked and builds social connection and collective understanding along the way.

💡 What's in the toolkit?

Piloted with a group of undergraduate students in 2025, this comprehensive resource contains all the guidance that an educator needs to facilitate digital storytelling:

🔹 Requirements: facilitator skillsets, time required, software and equipment needs
🔹 Lessons and activities
🔹 Student deliverables for each unit
🔹 Tips to help students create, produce, and share their stories

🍎 Units:

🔹 Framing Digital Storytelling:
Six lessons take students through a series of Writers Workshops to draft the narrative of what will eventually become their digital story. This unit emphasizes group connections, icebreakers, and teambuilding.

🔹 Content Creation:
Students work independently on finalizing their storyboard and gathering content (photos and audio) that will eventually be incorporated into their digital story.

🔹 Film Production:
Students focus on creating, editing, revising, and finalizing their digital stories using video editing software. Through editing workshops, facilitators support students to transform their storyboards and gather media into polished, shareable films.

…

Every student has their own vision of a meaningful life.

This free toolkit helps educators create the conditions for students to explore those visions, tell their stories, and build community along the way.

We’re excited to share this toolkit so other institutions and organizations can adapt, replicate, and build upon this work — and, most importantly, so we can learn from you.

Grab the toolkit here: https://crowninstitute.colorado.edu/learn/educators/tools-for-educator/digital-storytelling-toolkit

The Renée Crown Wellness Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute at University of Colorado Boulder seeking to promote the wellness of young people and the systems and adults who support them.

We imagine a world where every young person thrives, supported by the caring relationships and inner resources required for a lifetime of wellness.

We use interdisciplinary research-practice partnerships that invite many perspectives— from psychology and neuroscience to contemplative practice, education, and the arts—to create groundbreaking tools for real change in classrooms, waiting rooms, and living rooms.

Our conviction:
📓❤️ Science + love work better together.

Kids are struggling — in record numbers and often alone. Their parents and teachers are often exhausted and overwhelmed. These challenges are complex and require a new approach, starting with the core conviction that kids, parents, and teachers have profound capacities, including the inherent capacity to be well.

To truly discover how kids, families, and educators access these inner capacities, science must work in a different way. That’s why we choose to conduct research that is both scientifically rigorous and infused with respect, humility, kindness, and dignity — qualities that, in any other context, we’d simply call…

Love.

“There is no ‘us’ (the researchers) and ‘them’ (the subjects). Those old distinctions are dissolved. There is only a ‘we.’” —Sona Dimidjian, PhD, Institute Director, Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

We invite you to join us.

💫 Learn all about us here: https://crowninstitute.colorado.edu/

🔸 Designed by educators, for educators.

Every course is grounded in the real experiences of teaching—the challenges, constraints, joys, and everyday moments that shape life in schools.

🔸 Research meets real life.

The curriculum combines rigorous research, contemplative wisdom, and the lived experience of teachers, counselors, and administrators.

🔸 Support yourself. Support your community.

Develop practices that strengthen self-compassion while cultivating compassion for students, families, colleagues, and your broader school community.

🔸 Learn how to:

1️⃣ Strengthen educator wellbeing and resilience
2️⃣ Develop self-compassion and lead with dignity
3️⃣ Support student learning through compassionate practices
4️⃣ Build safer, more inclusive school communities

🔸 Create lasting change.

Explore compassionate actions, policies, and routines that can help your school become a place where educators and students can truly thrive.

🔸 Lead with compassion. Teach with dignity.

Join a growing community of educators committed to creating healthier schools for themselves, their students, and the communities they serve.

🔸 This is a self-paced, asynchronous online program designed for educators who want to strengthen their own wellbeing while creating more compassionate, inclusive school communities.

Learn more here: https://online.colorado.edu/teacher-leadership-certificates/cultivating-compassion-dignity-in-ourselves-and-schools

When Paolo Chavez Calvadores started teaching in rural Colorado, he yearned for a more intentional approach to his work and how he shows up in the world. Calvadores came to the United States hoping to “grow as an educator and serve students in a meaningful way."

Those desires led him to enroll in the Master’s in Teacher Leadership program at University of Colorado Boulder and particularly the Certificate track in "Cultivating Compassion in Ourselves and Our Schools," which turned out to be a transformative decision, he said.

The program, offered entirely online with ample interactions between educators from all over Colorado and beyond, allowed the science teacher from his small district in northern Colorado to engage in deep connections with other educators.

As an immigrant building a life in the U.S., Calvadores and his journey has included uncertainty, long hours and the challenges of balancing work, faith, study and family. But through it all, he never feels alone. His family, colleagues and new connections in the Teacher Leadership program have walked alongside him.

“Before this program, I often focused on doing more, being better and pushing through difficulties without really pausing. But through my experience here, I’ve learned that in order to truly support others, my students, my colleagues and my community, I need to first be grounded, present and know what my intention is. Instead of reacting to challenges with pressure or self-doubt, I’ve learned to respond with awareness, patience and intention. Real change doesn’t always come from big actions, but from small, consistent ways we show up for others every day."

His best piece of advice for incoming students:

”Be present and give yourself grace. It is easy to feel like you have to do everything perfectly… but real growth happens when you allow yourself to learn, reflect, and even make mistakes. Take time to truly engage in the experience, not just to complete the work, but to deeply understand how it connects to who you are as an educator and as a human being.

“Also, do not be afraid to lean on your community. The people around you, your classmates, professors, and colleagues, are part of your growth. You do not have to do it alone.”

Read the full story here: https://www.colorado.edu/education/2026/04/28/meet-paolo-chavez-calvadores-educator-leading-through-compassion-community-and

Yvonne Kristy arrived at college full of hope, but social anxiety made it difficult to navigate campus life. Without the support she needed, she left during her first year.

She didn't give up.

As a single mother raising two sons, working multiple jobs, and relying on public assistance, she returned to school and earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from CU Boulder.

Her sons were watching.

They watched her determination, resilience, and belief that education could change a life. Those lessons stayed with them.

Years later, her son Jeremy May honored her journey by establishing the Yvonne Kristy Endowed Chair at the Crown Institute, supporting research focused on compassion, mindfulness, altruism, and the greater good.

That gift helped launch the OASIS Study, led by Professor Joanna Arch, which supports students experiencing social anxiety by helping them build confidence, connection, and belonging.

Students in OASIS are speaking up in class, attending office hours, making friends, and finding their place on campus—small moments that can change the course of a college experience.

When Yvonne saw the early results, she reflected that this kind of support could have changed her own college journey.

Sometimes the support we wish we'd had becomes the support we create for others.

One family's story is now helping shape a more compassionate future for students at CU Boulder and beyond.

Read the full story here: https://www.colorado.edu/advancement/2026/05/01/mothers-perseverance-inspires-generosity-and-transforms-student-lives

Ten University of Colorado Boulder - Leeds School of Business and Crown Institute students and fellows traveled to Dharamshala, India to join a global cohort exploring how mindfulness, compassion and interdependence help leaders navigate complexity and increase impact.

Students described this trip as one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives.

Founded with the support of the Dalai Lama and facilitated in partnership with the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia, the yearlong Dalai Lama Fellowship helps young leaders and changemakers develop leadership skills grounded in compassion, empathy and community engagement.

Through projects in their local communities and immersive experiences abroad, fellows explore how mindfulness and an understanding of interdependence can inform leadership, strengthen decision-making and help business leaders navigate an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

“We want students to understand the importance of interdependence and compassion as sustainable values in the global business environment. Business is often stigmatized as purely profit-driven, but we aim to show a more balanced approach. We are not suggesting steering away from profit-making but rather illustrating *how* value is interconnected and shared across communities.” *— Shubham Sapkota, research associate at the Crown Institute and co-leader of the Dalai Lama Fellowship*

“As the Dalai Lama teaches, no organization, no leader and no community exists in isolation. Interdependence as a lived leadership value means recognizing that decisions ripple outward in ways we may never fully see. Students who internalize this begin to ask not just ‘What is the return?’ but ‘What is the impact, and on whom?’” —Sebastian Villa Betancur, assistant professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Operations at Leeds and a Crown Institute faculty fellow

“My week in Dharamshala has changed me, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend this assembly.”
—Piper Adamo (Fin, Acct’29)

Read the full article here: https://www.colorado.edu/business/news/2025/06/24/dalai-lama-fellows-trip-2026

✨ On Flourishing: 50 Years of Science & Practice ✨

At the Crown Institute, we believe flourishing grows through compassion, connection, and evidence-based practice.

That's why we're excited to see our director, Dr. Sona Dimidjian, Dr. Richard J. Davidson and Roshi Joan Halifax for this special conversation.

Dr. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of Humin, has spent five decades advancing our understanding of wellbeing, resilience, and the mind.

He'll be joined by Roshi Joan Halifax, author, civil rights activist, and founder of the Upaya Zen Center, along with Dr. Dimidjian, director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and a leader in contemplative science, mental health, and wellbeing.

Together, these three leaders have spent decades exploring how scientific research and contemplative traditions can support individual and collective flourishing—work that is at the heart of the Crown Institute's mission.

Join us
📅 Thursday, July 16, at 7:00 PM CT
📍@ The Playhouse
🎦 A livestream will also be available

The program runs 90 minutes with no intermission and is recommended for ages 14 and up.

We hope you'll join us for an evening of insight, reflection, and conversation about what helps people and communities thrive. Register at the link in our bio.

🎟️ Grab your free tickets here: https://www.overture.org/tickets-events/2026-27-season/on-flourishing-50-years-of-science-practice/