The Abundant Academy for UoE Community

Details of Abundant Academy's purpose and programme.

A window at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.
A window at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Harriet Harris.

The Abundant Academy purpose and programme

The Abundant Academy programme is a bespoke coaching programme designed specifically for university members and communities, recognising the sense of vocation that many of us carry within Higher Education. It is a personal and leadership development programme delivered to university staff and postgraduate students, with a demonstrable ripple out effect upon colleagues and undergraduates. Its creator, Revd Dr Harriet Harris, is a philosophical theologian, a university Chaplain, and a licensed Coach and Trainer, who developed the Abundant Academy out of 10-years’ work with University of Edinburgh students and staff, on What’s the University for?, Slow University, and collaborations with the Scottish Government and universities around the world on bringing Compassion into the structures and ethos of Higher Education.

Responding to the epidemic of stress amongst university staff and students, and the challenge that hustle-culture presents to our ability to do meaningful work, the Abundant Academy programme trains us in habits of replenishment, connectedness and efficacy, so that we live and work impactfully and without burnout.

The programme is for anyone looking for a heightened sense of vision for their work and wider life. It is particularly effective in supporting those who support others, and may become over-extended in their support and teaching roles. A postgraduate student recently said at our PhD book club, ‘We have no role-models of non-burnt-out success’. We don’t want to keep adding to that picture, especially in these highly-charged times. Abundant Academy resources teach us how to protect ourselves and others from burnout, and to open up space for living and working in ways that are meaningful, important, and inspired.

The Abundant Academy supports you to:

  • Replenish, and model replenishment for others: acquiring habits that powerfully keep overwhelm and burnout at bay, and support your identity and the following of your vocation. You will find surprising amounts of time and space for yourself and for what you most value, and enter into holy rest. This opening part of the programme also grows understanding of disempowered behaviours, and equips you in ways of being that have strength and integrity for you and for your interactions with others.
  • Reconnect, with yourselves and others, and with the Source of life: cultivating spiritual depth, (re)-discovering what is important to you; understanding what motivates you, and what drives you emotionally; overcoming procrastination, and recovering your creativity. Reconnecting is the route to discernment; uncovering our sense of purpose, integrity, joy, and the difference we make to the world. It opens us to a sense abundance even in difficulties, so that we can respond wisely and compassionately, rather than reactively, frenetically, or desperately, to the challenges we face.
  • Realise, and empower realisation in those around you: finding the steps to take, the collaborations to make, and the support to harness, for fostering cultures and communities that you wish to inhabit and nurture, where life can be lived in all its abundance.
Photograph of a chair surrounded by bookshelves filled with books.
A book nook at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Harriet Harris

The Core Programme

The Abundant Academy flagship programme is designed to sit humanely across the academic year. It comprises three core courses: ‘Replenish’, ‘Reconnect’ and ‘Realise’ (the 3Rs!). ‘Replenish’ and ‘Reconnect’ can each be taken as stand-alone courses. ‘Realise’ works as a follow-on from either or both of the earlier courses.

Across your time together, you cultivate increasingly fertile ground for growing your visions and projects. You benefit from the supportive network that you create for one another, and also begin to see your projects or mission take root.

You become part a network that you help to foster, and with whom you can continue to meet and enjoy mutual support even after their formal Abundant Academy programme. You are invited to join the Abundant Academy Community, which meets for facilitated gatherings, on-going coaching, and personal check-ins on whatever is important to us in our lives right now.

The Replenish Course

Replenish, and model replenishment for others

5x2 hours, fortnightly, Semester 1

  • Continual Replenishment, why we need it and how we can get it
  • Understanding disempowered behaviour; handling our internal ‘frenemies’ (inner critic, pusher, pleaser, imposter, perfectionist…).
  • Harnessing empowering archetypes
  • Meeting our needs; powerful compassion; radical replenishment
  • Releasing limiting beliefs, emotions and behaviours

Timings:

2-4pm Tuesdays, fortnightly, 10 Oct – 5 Dec 2023 (online via Zoom)    

Optional in-person workshop Monday 30 October – ‘Embodied learning: using your full intelligence'

Optional online workshop Friday 17 November – ‘Handling perfectionism and imposter syndrome’

For further information please email Harriet at h.harris@ed.ac.uk

Photograph of Yinka Shonibare, ‘The British Library’, Tate Modern, photo by Harriet Harris
Yinka Shonibare, ‘The British Library’, Tate Modern, photo by Harriet Harris. On the spines of the books are names of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, and of those opposed to immigration. Some of the books are unmarked because the story of immigration to Britain is still being written

The Reconnect Course

Reconnect, with ourselves and others, and with the source of life

5x2 hours, fortnightly, Semester 2

  • A primer on replenishment and empowerment
  • Understanding and processing our emotions
  • Discovering our values and unconscious drivers
  • Responding to procrastination and what gets us stuck
  • Finding wisdom for the next steps

Timings:

2-4pm Tuesdays, fortnightly, 23 Jan – 19 Mar 2024 (online via Zoom)    

Optional in-person workshop, 19 February: ‘Saying “No”, so that you can say “Yes” to what is most meaningful’ in-person

Optional on-line workshop, 15 March, ‘Asking for what you need, for individual and group endeavours’, online

The Realise Course

Realise, and empower realisation with others

3x2 hours, consecutive weeks, post-Semester break (May), plus an in-person workshop day

  • Tuning into our deep-rooted desires, and exploring meaning and purpose
  • Creating networks of support and collaboration
  • Inspired, visionary planning (outwith SMART goals), workshop

Timings:

2-4pm, Tuesdays, weekly, 7-21 May 2024 (online via Zoom)    

11am-4pm in-person Workshop, ‘A day of inspired, visionary planning (outwith SMART goals)’, in-person, Tuesday 28 May

Optional online workshop with the AbAc Community, ‘Do More Great work’, date tbc

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