In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Dr. Matthew Lee, research professor at Baylor University and co-leader of the Global Flourishing Study—a longitudinal project spanning 22 countries and nearly 200,000 people. They discuss what it means to flourish as whole human beings and how education can support not only academic success but spiritual, emotional, and relational well-being. Dr. Lee shares insights on how flourishing is not just about individual happiness or wellness, but about contributing to the greater good—what he describes as "ecosystem-wide flourishing." He and Eckert explore how love, hospitality, and compassion can shape the culture of schools, drawing from research and real-world examples, including organizations like Barry-Wehmiller that center care and community in their leadership. The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership.Be encouraged.Mentioned:Unreasonable Hospitality by Will GuidaraChristian Caregiving: A Way of Life by Kenneth Haugk Connect with us:Baylor MA in School LeadershipEdD in K-12 Educational LeadershipJon Eckert LinkedInX: @eckertjonCenter for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl     Transcript: Jon Eckert:All right. Today we get to welcome a good friend and colleague at Baylor University. So Matt Lee is here with us today, and his work all revolves around flourishing, which is the ultimate goal of all education and one of the most intrinsically human things that we think about. So Matt, if you just give us a quick intro as to why you're at Baylor and kind of the 30,000-foot view of what you do here at Baylor.Matt Lee:Well, thanks, Jon. I'm delighted to be here at Baylor, and I would say part of the reason that I'm here is that the Global Flourishing Study is a joint project of Baylor and Harvard, and this is a five year, 22 country survey to understand the forces that affect flourishing for about 200,000 people globally. And we've got nationally representative samples in each of these countries. So we're almost able to generalize to all humanity, which is unusual for a study. And to have this longitudinal approach enables us to follow up over time, look at changes. We've got the time ordering nailed down, we've got some statistical techniques to address robustness. We're almost able to make causal claims that generalize to all humanity. So that was one of the reasons.The other thing is I just really appreciate Baylor's mission and ability to combine really rigorous research with a Christian commitment. And so I think that is a special strength of Baylor University, not to go into a commercial for Baylor right now.Jon Eckert:Oh no, we're all for that. But it's one of the reasons why our work overlaps, because we work with education leaders in over 45 countries and all 50 states and the stated goal of education since Aristotle has been for the flourishing of human beings. And so there's obviously a school component of this. You're looking at all of humanity. Again, that's not probably something I'll ever be able to say as a researcher that I've able to generalize findings to all humanity.But I'm curious to hear how you all think about words like flourishing in love and operationalize those for educators. What does that look like in whatever school you're called to? Obviously, we're here at Baylor and we can have a faith component to what undergirds everything we do, but a lot of our educators that we serve are in public schools, and there's secular humanism there, and there's all different kinds of kids with all different kinds of backgrounds. So what does flourishing and love look like universally, in the way you would define it?Matt Lee:Well, I would frame it as a dialogue. And so we are contributing to a dialogue. And I remember there was a chaplain at Harvard who used to just observe that Harvard tends to treat students as though they are just a brain on a stick or maybe a neocortex on a stick.