Director, Eric Loucks, Welcomes Professor Florence Meleo-Meyer

Dear colleagues,

It is a pleasure to share that Florence Meleo-Meyer has received an appointment as Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences. 

As the School of Public Health develops its mindfulness teaching programs, through the MPH concentration in mindfulness and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher Training program, it is essential to have outstanding MBSR teacher trainers who can assure the quality of our programs not only for training the next generation, but also in scientifically evaluating them through our research being led by faculty members at Brown. Ms. Meleo-Meyer is integral to ensuring the quality of MBSR curricula, MBSR teacher-training programs, and the global reach of these programs because of her scholarship, commitment to quality, and close relationships to some of the top MBSR teacher training programs in the world which she helped to develop.  

Ms. Meleo-Meyer is one of the most experienced, respected MBSR teacher-trainers in the world. Over the past 26 years, Ms. Meleo-Meyer has taught MBSR, and trained MBSR teachers and MBSR teacher-trainers. She was director of MBSR professional teacher education for 17 years at the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School. She directed and taught the first program to train MBSR teacher trainers.

At the Mindfulness Center at Brown, Ms. Meleo-Meyer has mentored MBSR teacher trainers around the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Finland, France, Denmark, South Korea and China. It is her dedication to contribute to the beneficial impact of mindfulness programs and the next generation of teachers that is felt globally, and as a result people from around the world come to Brown to by trained by Ms. Meleo-Meyer and her colleagues as MBSR teachers. It takes collaborative leadership to develop the international field of mindfulness, and Ms. Meleo-Meyer is one of the best examples of this.

Some of Ms. Meleo-Meyer’s key scholarly contributions have been in developing the MBSR curricula (as a co-author on the authorized curriculum guide), and as a lead developer for MBSR teacher training program. She is particularly astute at the needs for cross-cultural communication, and adaptions to particular cultures and languages in regions around the world. She has worked closely with MBSR teacher-trainers internationally to develop teacher training programs that best fit the needs of the populations they serve. She is further contributing as one of the lead developers of the Mindfulness-Based Program Teacher Training curricula at Brown, which aims to train teachers not only in MBSR, but also in other evidence-based mindfulness programs such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.

A further area of innovative scholarship for Ms. Meleo-Meyer, as shown in her book chapters, is around cultivating mindfulness in relationships. She is a recognized authority in techniques to bring mindfulness to relationships with others, and along with her writings on this in the published literature, she is a sought-after retreat leader in these domains.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Meleo-Meyer to the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown School of Public Health.

Best wishes,

Eric

Eric B. Loucks, PhD

Director, Mindfulness Center