Our Courses

The Headwaters Project is the home for multiple teaching initiatives including two classes , a seminar, and a reading group at the University of Pittsburgh. More initiatives are in development.

Happiness and Human Flourishing is the flagship course of the Headwaters Project. In this interdisciplinary class focused on students within the applied arts and sciences, we explore different conceptions of happiness and work to develop a capacious definition of happiness as “human flourishing.” We then then examine how various applied disciplines might be oriented toward the flourishing person. Throughout the course, we help students reflect on their own lives and how they might construct flourishing lives in college and beyond through the development of better habits. Learn more here.

Health Policy and Human Flourishing: Grounded in the capabilities and motivations of human persons, this course develops a capacious definition of health as “human flourishing.” We then discuss ways in which the government in combination with rich civil society might promote human flourishing. We conclude the course exploring challenges and opportunities facing American liberal democracy in promoting human flourishing.

Engineering Happiness: In this seminar, participants are invited to consider their subjective well-being across several domains of human flourishing (e.g. relationships, mental and physical health, engaged activity) in light of social data on the same trends. The discussion then turns to an analysis and engineering of habits to enable positive transformations via the findings of positive psychology. The final sessions assist students in exploring frameworks of happiness that extend beyond emotional state theory and subjective life satisfaction.