News
CIIS Professor Douglas Vakoch Named to International Academy of AstronauticsOct 9 2009
Douglas Vakoch, a core faculty member in the Clinical Psychology program at CIIS, was recently named a corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics. The International Academy of Astronautics is an independent organization of distinguished individuals elected by their peers for their outstanding contributions to astronautics and the exploration of space. Vakoch is one of only 17 members worldwide in the field of social science who were picked for membership in this round.
Douglas was elected to the International Academy of Astronautics in recognition of his research and leadership in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He chairs the IAA’s Study Group on Interstellar Message Composition, which is charged with contemplating the questions: “Should we be transmitting messages to civilizations that may exist around distant stars, and if we do, what should we say, and how should we say it?”
“At the core of this project,” says Vakoch, “is one of CIIS’s central values: celebrating the depth and diversity of the human experience. If some day we decide to transmit intentional messages to other worlds, those messages should represent the voices of people from around the Earth, and CIIS provides a wonderful environment to contemplate these issues.”
In making Vakoch an Academician, the IAA also recognizes his work in ecopsychology, which tries to understand the role that people play in critical environmental problems. Increasingly, space scientists are using satellites to monitor the health of our planet. Among Vakoch’s work in this area is editing (with CIIS Professor Fernando Castrillon) a forthcoming special double issue of ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, a peer-reviewed journal. That special issue deals with ecopsychology, and includes four papers by current CIIS students in the department of Clinical Psychology and the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.
At CIIS, Vakoch teaches a range of courses within in Clinical Psychology, including Humanistic and Existential Psychology. “I find that the more I look outward into space, trying to understand our place in the cosmos, the more deeply I return to our own lived experiences right here on Earth,” says Vakoch. “I feel fortunate to be able to grapple with what it means to be human in the fullest sense with students and fellow faculty at CIIS.”
