Theravada Buddhist Studies with the Sati Institute

M. Editor  |  August 18, 2011

The Institute of Buddhist Studies (IBS) and the Sati Institute of Theravada Buddhist Studies (SITBS) announce a new, cooperative degree program.

At its meeting Friday, 12 August, the IBS Board of Trustees approved a cooperative relationship between the IBS and the SITBS, including a new Theravada Studies track within the Master of Buddhist Studies degree program. This cooperative undertaking is an important expansion of IBS’s curricular offerings, making available to students the rich resources that the faculty of the SITBS bring to the study of Buddhism. This fall term two new classes Meditation in the Theravada Tradition and Readings in Early Buddhist Texts are being added to the IBS course offerings in support of this new specialization.

Future plans for the program include not only additional course offerings in the textual and practice tradition of Theravada Buddhism, but also the study of Pali, one of the primary languages for inquiry into the canonic traditions of Buddhism.

For additional information about the new Theravada Studies track at IBS, please see the Sati Institute’s website, or click on the course titles above.

About the instructors:

Gil Fronsdal is the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, and has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Dr. Fronsdal teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.


Nona Olivia has been practicing meditation for some 40 years. She graduated from Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s first Dedicated Practitioner Program and is a Lay Buddhist Minister, ordained by Gil Fronsdal. Dr. Olivia holds a Ph.D. from Brown University and teaches at the University of Colorado in Boulder.