alumninews

On a space-available basis, NESA alumni may take courses in the curriculum which they have not previously taken and which do not have a practical component, for CAEUs. (In order to comply with Massachusetts state law, alumni may only take Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) track courses as part of the CHM Certificate Program unless you have already have completed the program and wish to take courses that have been added since you were enrolled or electives.) Although CAEUs cannot be awarded for courses previously taken, alumni may choose to audit previously taken courses, including CHM courses, to revisit the material. Exams are not required for any of the above courses, though you are encouraged to take exams “off the record” so you can better assess your course outcomes.

Courses which may be new since you studied at NESA include core curriculum courses such as Survey of Classical Chinese Medical Texts , Research I: Design and Evaluation and Orthopedic Acupuncture (combining Oriental and Western medical perspectives), and elective courses such as Experience, Experiments and the Soul (with Ted Kaptchuk), Course descriptions for many of these courses are available to download on the NESA website at www.nesa.edu Click on “Academics” and then click on “Courses”.

Tuition for these courses is at the audit rate (half of the regular tuition), which is currently $185 per credit, and courses range from one to four credits. The spring 2008 term runs from Monday, January 7 th through Saturday, April 26 th with spring break Monday, February 18 th through Saturday, February 23 rd . Visit the NESA website for a course schedule and contact the Continuing Education Department at 617-558-1788 x 112 to register. Registration for the spring 2008 term is due by Thursday, December 20 th and tuition is due at the time of registration. Keep an eye on the website for ongoing course offerings and registration deadlines throughout the academic year!

Come participate in Ted Kaptchuk's intellectually invigorating and poetic course : Experience, Experiments and the Soul Tuesdays 8:30am -10:30am from January 5 th – March 4 th . Here is the course description:

This course is a series of lectures, discussions and exchanges on some of the fundamental philosophic, epistemological and clinical care questions of Oriental medicine. It examines how the practitioner of Oriental medicine ”knows” what the optimal and “correct” treatment is, evaluates efficacy and understands how treatments influence human life. This perspective of Oriental medicine will be contrasted with how Western biomedicine grapples with such issues of fact and values, body and mind, disease and illness, experience and experiments, objectivity and subjectivity. The question of how the Oriental medical concept of “soul” ( ling-hun ) provides the framework for the psycho-spiritual perspective of Oriental medicine will be examined. The impact of this framework will be practically examined in some very common herbal and acupuncture prescriptions so that students will have an opportunity to re-conceptualize previously mastered material. The traditional Oriental perspective on the patient-physician relationship and its impact on healing will be examined. This is an opportunity for students to develop and reflectively examine their own understanding of Oriental medicine and to self-examine their own “knowing” and “feelings”. It is assumed that such a deliberate reflexive process will provide the basis for students to become more competent and powerful healers. This course is heavily oriented toward Chinese herbal medicine.