Saybrook Graduate School • Research Center
Scholarship Pratice Service
 

About Saybrook Graduate School


Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center was founded in 1971 as the Humanistic Psychology Institute as part of Sonoma State University. Later it was incorporated and was designated as a non-profit corporation, a 501(c)(3) organization according to the IRS. A product of the nationwide wave of innovation in higher education, it was founded on the basic humanistic belief that human consciousness at individual and societal level is a work in progress for which each person is responsible. This vision still provides the ethical, pedagogical and disciplinary content of the school's programs. As we enter the twenty-first century humanity stands at the dawn of its first global society. The threats and promises of these times require new modes of thought and new methods of action. Saybrook believes that graduate education should prepare scholar/practitioners to take effective leadership roles in developing the higher levels of consciousness needed to realize the immense possibilities of these times, while at the same time minimizing the ever present potential for social and individual suffering. To that end Saybrook provides a unique learner-centered environment for advanced studies in psychology, human science, and organizational systems based in an emancipatory humanistic tradition.

The program is designed primarily, though not exclusively, for adult mid-career professionals seeking an opportunity to engage in serious scholarly work, to develop the necessary research, scope of knowledge, and intervention skills to become more effective in their chosen sphere of work. Saybrook's goals include the advancement of our understanding of human beings and the human condition, a commitment to create and enlarge opportunities for human fulfillment, the encouragement of full expression of the highest human possibilities, and the furtherance of emancipatory values in individuals, communities, organizations and the world at large.

To achieve these goals Saybrook offers innovative, individualized and rigorous dispersed residency MA and Ph.D. programs in Psychology, Human Science, and Organizational Systems. Areas of concentration include Humanistic, Transpersonal Clinical Inquiry and Health Studies, Consciousness and Spirituality Studies, Peace, Conflict Resolution and Community Development, and Organizational Systems. Saybrook's curriculum is a unique blend of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, studies of consciousness and spirituality, and critical and creative methods of inquiry that makes it possible to go beyond mainstream academic disciplines into potentially groundbreaking new perspectives about what it means to be fully human.

The Saybrook educational process includes one-to-one mentoring in faculty- structured required and elective courses; weeklong residential conferences at which students take seminars and courses for credit, attend guest presentation and workshops, access library and computer training, experiential learning of applied techniques and research skills and participate in peer learning; and (increasingly) web based courses where student-to-student on-line group work is required. An essential contribution of the Saybrook conferences to the unique "closeness at a distance" learning process is the creation of an intensive learning community where students meet faculty, administrators and more importantly, each other. This helps solidify student-to-student relationships. deepen learning and to sustain student' connection and commitment to their learning process between conferences. Between conferences, students have access to each other and to the administration and all their faculty by mail, fax, phone and the internet.

Common to the entire program is a humanistic vision of education as a transformative process. Saybrook has a commitment to the humanistic tradition in psychology and the social sciences, and fosters the development, employment and critique of innovative research methods through which to build relevant, reliable, and emancipatory knowledge about the significant questions of human psychological and cultural life.


Please direct all questions and comments to Saybrook Web Office