Graduate Programs

We bring together scholars and activists to engage in co-learning, inspired by a long and beautiful history of education developed in popular universities, modern schools, universities of earth and without walls, and free schools. Our learning community is a convivial space where we collectively consider social movement histories and create a shared understanding of how to influence the movements we are a part of.

Our graduates are trained for professional careers in academia, policy, social-political journalism, advocacy, and community, legal, and environmental organizations. Our faculty have a wide range of research interests, among them urban social movements, agri-food studies, politics and filmmaking, post-structuralist philosophy, gender equality, forced migration and refugees, radical oral history, and psychoanalytic time. 

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We believe another world is within our grasp. Systematic research of counter-hegemonic knowledge and practices has gained supreme relevance with the world in crisis. Our PhD program will equip you with the necessary skills to participate in the "nowtopian" task of constructing social scientific knowledge that looks beyond capitalism, hierarchy, and ecological disaster.    

Our graduates are trained for professional careers in academia, policy, social-political journalism, advocacy, and community, legal, and environmental organizations. Our faculty have a wide range of research interests, among them urban social movements, agri-food studies, politics and filmmaking, post-structuralist philosophy, gender equality, forced migration and refugees, radical oral history, and psychoanalytic time.

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CIIS’s Community Mental Health(CMH) program integrates the fundamentals of psychotherapy from a liberation psychology lens with cultural humility and an understanding of the impact of trauma and social systems on the individual. Developed in partnership with public and nonprofit mental health agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area, this program is one of five offered through the CIIS Counseling Psychology department.

CMH prepares students to become licensed psychotherapists with the ability to gain dual licensure (LMFT and/or LPCC). Graduates are prepared to practice counseling in hospitals, clinics, schools, government agencies, community nonprofits, and more. Our faculty have a variety of research interests, including social justice advocacy for Native American Indigenous Communities, intergenerational trauma and resilience, working with immigrant family systems and individuals, addressing systems of power and oppression, human sexuality, feminist theories, and post modernism, social sustainability in the context of intentional community, psychoanalysis, the discourse of capitalism and the California Dream.

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The Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology with a Concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy is a BBS-approved, 3-year, low-residency degree program for California residents. 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 Expressive Arts Therapy program trains future leaders in the expressive arts therapy field. Our graduates are prepared for professional careers in private practice, mental health facilities, healthcare organizations, human services agencies, and schools. Our faculty have a variety of research interests, including creativity and spirituality among African Americans, multicultural and social justice counseling, education and supervision, neuro-diverse populations, homeless women, adolescents in residential rehabilitation, and the integration of the arts into spiritual practice.

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CIIS’ Human Sexuality Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary program in critical sexuality studies, exploring the intersections of power and sexuality. Through coursework, students undergo an analysis of power structures by exploring the many socio-cultural organizations of sex and gender that influence societies. 

Graduates of our Human Sexuality Ph.D. program are prepared for professional careers in research, education, clinical and organizational settings, advocacy, policy, and more. Our faculty have a wide range of research interests, among them social and economic justice issues for the LGBTQ community, feminist conversations on power and gender, the biopolitics of HIV-prevention, reproductive journeys of transgender and nonbinary people, bioethics of sexual reorientation interventions, and bisexual representations in film and media.

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Integral Counseling Psychology’s hybrid program adapts our department’s holistic, spiritually-oriented, multicultural, and liberatory framework for psychotherapy to meet advances in telehealth and education with immersive and experiential online courses. This program is geared for students who live outside the San Francisco Bay Area or California and need the flexibility of primarily online coursework, with one on-campus intensive or retreat per semester.

Our graduates are trained to become licensed psychotherapists who go on to work in private practice, schools, and nonprofit organizations. Our faculty have a variety of research interests, among them ecopsychology, trauma theory, dreams and imagination, mystical practices, work with incarcerated people, LGBTQIA+ and activist communities, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and transpersonal, Jungian, and Gestalt psychologies.

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CIIS’ Integrative Health Studies program prepares students to become integrative health and wellness practitioners. Our nonclinical program is committed to bridging biomedical and alternative or complementary approaches to treatment. Students take all required courses as a cohort and experience supportive, collective learning on their way to becoming National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches or pursuing related careers in whole-person wellness.

Our faculty have a variety of research interests, among them: naturopathic, botanical and Ayurvedic medicine, behavioral medicine, stress physiology and neurobiology, health psychology, women's health, community-based and culturally-adapted interventions, health disparities, social connection, fitness and sports nutrition, psychoeducational and behavioral approaches to chronic disease prevention, health policy, ecological stewardship, mindfulness-based interventions, and guided imagery in psychotherapy.

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CIIS’ Psychology Ph.D. with a concentration in Integral Transpersonal Psychology is one of the few programs in the world that offers an online Ph.D. in whole-person approaches to psychology. It is a research-oriented program dedicated to systematic knowledge-building and the advancement of transpersonal psychology.

Our doctoral graduates are trained for professional careers in education and academia, activism and organizing, psychology, and fields related to personal development, social change, and environmental protection. Our faculty have a wide range of research interests, among them: cultural and historical consciousness studies, spiritual experiences, tantric meditation, altered consciousness and unusual/anomalous experiences, neuroscience of hypnosis and meditation, brain architecture and neurorehabilitation, creative process and cognition, and somatic, developmental, psychoanalytic, and trauma-based psychological theories.

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CIIS’ Psychology Ph.D. with a concentration in Somatic Psychology is a unique online doctoral program that approaches psychology from the lived experience of being human, while incorporating scientific rigor in building a more insightful, effective psychology of the living person. Students explore the implications for understanding human complexities that emerge from serious, prolonged cultivation of direct bodily experience: breathing, touching, sensing, moving.

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