About CIIS
A reputation built on 50 years of creativity, community, wellness, and multiple ways of knowing
At CIIS, you engage in issues vital to you, to today's world, and to your personal growth, exploring the deep connections that unite them. You can study in innovative, accredited graduate bachelor's degree programs, all in an academically rigorous setting.
We've built our reputation on 50 years of transformative education, as a unique University that prepares students with the knowledge, experience, and professional development to meet the challenges of today and understand the complexities of our fast-changing world.
In CIIS, you encounter a lively and diverse community of learners that honors multiple ways of teaching, learning, and knowing. You take part in small classes with faculty who are committed to your education.
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Mission Statement
California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is an accredited university that strives to embody spirit, intellect, and wisdom in service to individuals, communities, and the earth. CIIS expands the boundaries of traditional degree programs with transdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and applied studies utilizing face-to-face, hybrid, and online pedagogical approaches. Offering a personal learning environment and supportive community, CIIS provides an excellent multifaceted education for people committed to transforming themselves, others, and the world.
What is Integral Education?
Integral studies are a response to the growing need to synthesize the fragmentary aspects of contemporary thought and culture into a meaningful whole. The integral outlook, envisioned by the founders of CIIS as embodying a creative synthesis of the highest values of East and West, has grown to encompass the study of traditions and experience from around the globe. Integral studies at CIIS encompass all aspects of learning: the intellectual, the experiential and the applied.
Providing an integral education for a changing world, the Institute creates and integrates knowledge beyond the confines of traditional academic disciplines. CIIS values cultural diversity, multiple ways of knowing, spirituality, a sense of community, emancipatory ideals, and ecological sustainability, developing a reflective and innovative learning community. In exploring the interplay of mind, body, and spirit, integral education connects the spiritual and practical dimensions of intellectual life. The integration of the wisdom traditions presents an evolution of consciousness that has never been more relevant and crucial than it is today.
Here's some of what you can do here:
- Explore traditions of knowledge from many cultures and viewpoints, while you experience some of the most forward-looking visions of the future
- Take courses that offer you expansive ways of looking at the world
- Benefit from an interdisciplinary model of education
- Enroll in one-of-a-kind graduate programs in the School of Professional Psychology and Health and the School of Consciousness and Transformation
- Study online in graduate programs in the groundbreaking fields of Transformative Studies and Transformative Leadership
- Meet on weekends in the BA completion program in Interdisciplinary Studies with close-knit cohorts
- Provide therapy to the San Francisco community while interning under the supervision of the experienced clinicians in the CIIS counseling centers
- Create practicums or capstone projects that immerse you in collaborations with the communities you study
