The advisory board for the Consortium for Human Flourishing provides expertise and knowledge to the Consortium for the purpose of achieving its mission and vision.
Meet the Board
Art McCoy, Ph.D.
Art McCoy, Ph.D., is an inspiring, internationally recognized educator and champion of children. At age 19, he began his career as a mathematics teacher in the Rockwood School District after graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science, reportedly as the youngest certified teacher in Missouri. He served as a secondary level principal from age 22 to 25. After receiving a Doctor of Philosophy, he was named Pattonville’s K-12 Gifted Director at age 25. In December 2010, Dr. McCoy became the youngest and first African-American superintendent/C.E.O. of Ferguson-Florissant School District at age 33 and a leader for Harvard’s Pathways to Prosperity.
From 2014 to 2016, he served as the Superintendent-in-Residence/Chief Academic Officer of the MIND Research Institute and the Center for Education Innovation/Base 11 in Irvine, California, supporting over one million students in 2,500 schools and colleges across America. In February of 2016, he was recruited to return home and named superintendent in Jennings School District. Under Dr. McCoy’s leadership, multiple graduating Jennings classes achieved 100% graduation, career, and college placement as featured in the media.
Dr. McCoy is a 2017-2022 scholar-member of the UW-Madison Institute of Research on Poverty and Saint Louis University’s first Distinguished Fellow of the School of Education and third Geospatial Institute Fellow. He has served on over 30 executive boards and councils, including the Muny, Sheldon, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Commerce Bank St. Louis Region Board, Ranken Technical College, University of Missouri-St. Louis Chancellor’s Council, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce 2030 Alliance, and state and federal education departments and legislative bodies (i.e., House, Senate, Congress) advising policies, legislation and more.
Dr. McCoy is a two-time N.A.C.C.P. Inspiring St. Louisan, where he resides in Missouri. He is a 2013 Superintendent of the Year, 2017 PBS American Graduate Champion, 2018 UNCF Keeping the Flame Awardee, 2020 Honorary Firefighter of the Riverview Fire District, and more. Dr. McCoy leads and has inspired scores of innovative initiatives, raised more than 20 million dollars, authored articles and books, and founded S.A.G.E.S. LLC and 501(c)(3), with the mission to “Sever Attainment Gaps Existing in Society.”
Matthew T. Lee, Ph.D.
Matthew T. Lee, Ph.D., is Director of Empirical Research at the Human Flourishing Program in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is co-author of The Heart of Religion and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Measuring Well-Being (both with Oxford University Press). He is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Health, Flourishing, and Positive Psychology at Stony Brook University’s Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics and he previously served as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity. His research explores pathways to human flourishing, benevolent service to others, and the integration of social science and the humanities.
Juan Xi, Ph.D.
Juan Xi, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at the University of Akron, is author and co-author of over 30 research articles and book chapters. Her recent research examines the impact of mindfulness meditation through a mindful approach to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods.
Jonathan Beale, Ph.D.
Jonathan Beale, Ph.D., is Researcher-in-Residence at Eton College. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and a Research Fellow for "BrainCanDo" – an educational neuroscience research center. He is co-editor of three books for Routledge: Wittgenstein and Scientism (2017), The "BrainCanDo" Handbook of Teaching and Learning (2020) and Wittgenstein and Contemporary Moral Philosophy (2022). He has published articles on education and philosophy in academic journals and media outlets including The New York Times. His research focuses on the role of human flourishing in education; character education; the limits of the science of learning; and the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
How he connects to flourishing: “I’m particularly interested in how we should understand what it means to flourish and the role of human flourishing in education, and the relationship between these two areas. For example, if we take flourishing to be the ultimate aim of education, how this affects our understanding of what it means to flourish. My current research attempts to offer an account of flourishing that provides the resources for showing how all people can flourish, while also showing why certain factors should be recognized as those that prevent a person’s possibility of or limit their potential for flourishing – for example, certain restrictions on human freedom or living an unethical way of life. I also work on school interventions that aim to develop some of the character virtues that are important for flourishing. At the moment, my focus in this area is on a project that aims to develop students’ ‘academic resilience’.”