As we finish the year, I am devoting my last two columns to the work of our commencement speaker, Michelle Gielan '96. After earning a degree in computer engineering from Tufts, Michelle quickly rose through the ranks of broadcast journalism to become the anchor for two national CBS newscasts (she's a Holton girl, after all). Shortly after she landed at CBS, the economy plunged into recession. We all probably remember the news stories from that period: families losing their homes to foreclosure; retirees despairing as their retirement funds shrank. Gielan began to wonder whether all these negative stories served any purpose except to make people feel worse (and possibly turn off the TV). She persuaded CBS to launch a "Happiness Week" during which they drew on research from positive psychology to present a more positive angle. They "wanted an activated, wholehearted, solutions-focused approach to broadcasting news."(6) Viewers responded with more positive emails in a week than the show had received for the whole previous year. Moreover, the positive stories did more than make people feel better; they propelled individuals to take action to improve their situations. This happiness experiment made Michelle reexamine her career track, and she left CBS to pursue a degree in Applied Positive Psychology at Penn.
↧