Expressive Arts Intensive

Embracing the power of the arts for healing, growth, and social change.

Department Mini-Site

The Expressive Arts Therapy program uses an innovative Scholar-Artist-Practitioner model that unites academic knowledge, clinical practice, and community engagement with the arts as the central focus. We embrace all artistic disciplines as means of positive transformation.

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Get a glimpse of the EXA program experience

Get a glimpse of the EXA program experience

Creativity That Makes A Difference

The Expressive Arts Therapy M.A. at CIIS unites evidence-based psychological training with a wide range of creative practices to health, growth, and social change. We embrace all artistic disciplines as means of positive transformation.

Our program emphasizes hands-on learning through experiential and collaborative coursework. We place a premium on co-learning between students and faculty by creating opportunities for rich, playful, and diverse conversations and experiences.

Expressive Arts Therapy is one of five master’s programs offered through CIIS’ Counseling Psychology department. The pedagogy provides an engaging online, hybrid curriculum that weaves multimodal expressive arts, such as visual and digital arts, music, dance and movement, poetry, spoken word, and drama into all courses.

The program works on the innovative Scholar-Artist-Practitioner model that focuses on uniting academic knowledge, clinical practice, and community engagement. Throughout the program students engage with peers and faculty in a collaborative, liberatory-focused, arts-based environment. We place a premium on co-learning between students and faculty by creating opportunities for rich, playful, and diverse conversations and experiences.

Explore Our M.A. programs

Which one of our five unique specializations is right for you?

    Close up of a hand using a paintbrush to daub white paint onto a canvas. Still from video by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels.

    Expressive Arts Therapy

    Integrate creative expression with clinical and community practice

    Purple water with boats

    Community Mental Health

    Focus on healing through social justice and structural change

    Person dancing

    Drama Therapy

    Utilize drama and theater to promote psychological health

    Rainbow mural in Ouarzazate, Morocco

    Integral Counseling Psychology

    Incorporate the mind, body, and spirit into therapeutic practice

    Somatic Pyschology

    Somatic Psychology

    Bring an embodied approach to whole-person healing

    Close up of a hand using a paintbrush to daub white paint onto a canvas. Still from video by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels.
    Purple water with boats
    Person dancing
    Rainbow mural in Ouarzazate, Morocco
    Somatic Pyschology

    Our Program in Action