About the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research

To address the demand for trained psychotherapists to work in the expanding field of psychedelic studies, CIIS created the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research (the Center) in 2015. The Center is directed by clinical psychologist Dr. Janis Phelps, who is also a professor in the East-West Psychology program.

The goal of the Center's certificate program is to teach licensed psychotherapists and  medical professionals and ordained clergy to become psychedelic researchers in the US and abroad. The certificate program has trained over 830 licensed and ordained professionals from 2016 to 2022. The next certificate course will begin in September 2023. Dr. Phelps has spoken at national and international conferences about this innovative, first of its kind postgraduate certification program.

Throughout its history, CIIS has been a leader in consciousness research, including research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. In 1997, nearly three decades after the enactment of the Controlled Substances Act made psychedelic drugs illegal, CIIS began offering the Robert Joseph and Wilhelmina Kranzke Endowed Scholarships, a gift of Robert Barnhart in memory of his parents. The endowment supports two to four annual scholarships of $5,000 each for students who are conducting approved psychotropic research. CIIS Trustee Meihong Xu and her husband, Bill Melton, have continued this tradition by matching all gifts and grants to the Center up to $300,000, doubling the value of any donation made to support psychedelic studies at CIIS. The Center has received more than $400,000 in scholarship funding from individual and organizational donors including Robert Barnhart, the George Sarlo Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, and the Betsy Gordon Foundation, alumni including from the Certificate Alumni Association, Elizabeth Baer, Dr. Wendy Feng, Dr. Jesus Gomez, Dr. Denise Renye, Dr. Afia Menke, the Boston Psychedelic Research Group, and trustees of CIIS, Dr. Ricki Pollycove, Betsy Gordon, and Maeve Rockefeller. These scholarships have supported BIPOC-identified people, LGBTQIA+-identified people, service members/veterans, people serving under-resourced communities, and people who demonstrate financial need to study in the Center's certificate program.

The creation of the Center allowed CIIS to build strong partnerships with other universities, medical centers, researchers, and research groups. Top psychedelic researchers and scholars —including Dr. Kwasi Adusei (Journey Clinical), Dr. Tony Back (University of Washington), Dr. Tony Bossis (New York University), Mary Cosimano, MSW, and Dr. Bill Richards (Johns Hopkins University), Dr. Charles Grob (University of California, Los Angeles), and Michael and Annie Mithoefer, lead researchers for the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) among others — have partnered with the Center to teach in the certificate program. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and California Pacific Medical Center sit on the Center’s council of advisors.

By bringing together these top researchers, the Center has opened an avenue for collaboration between MAPS, the Heffter Research Institute, and the Usona Institute, three of the most renowned research groups for psychedelic studies. The certificate program is the largest collaborative program focusing on psychedelic studies within a non-medical graduate university. Professor Phelps reports that "not only are we working with some of the majority of the psychedelic researchers in the country, but also we're preparing our graduates to make important advances in the fields of psychedelic research." Licensed therapists, medical professionals, and ordained clergy who earn a certificate in psychedelic research and therapy from CIIS will be specially trained as researchers and will eventually be eligible to be hired at current and future research centers across the United States. In expanded access programs, graduates of the certificate program at CIIS will eventually be eligible to work as psychedelic clinical researchers, under the supervision of a psychiatrist who would prescribe and administer the medication.

On March 23, 2018, Dr. Phelps and the certificate team hosted Dr. Bill Richards (Johns Hopkins University), Dr. Tony Bossis (New York University), and author Michael Pollan at the opening reception for the 2018-19 certificate program. The Center is grateful for Pollan's acclaimed 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind, in which he shares his own story and makes the Center's educational programming visible to practitioners and the general public.

In 2019 and 2020, the training program received a grant from the Threshold Foundation to support our application to the FDA for approval of a training protocol. If approved, our trainees will receive MDMA and psilocybin and practice being facilitators for these sessions under clinical supervision. In 2020, the Center received a three-year grant of $1.0 million from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to support the expansion of our certificate program. The Foundation’s generous gift will help the Center meet the rapidly growing demand for psychedelic therapists.

“One of our primary goals is to build a cohort of licensed therapists with CIIS certificates,” says Phelps. “We want to see our CIIS graduates working across the country as trained psychedelic researchers.” Another goal is to continue to build partnerships and to raise funds so that the Center can eventually run a psychedelic-assisted therapy research study at CIIS in San Francisco. One thing is certain: with the creation of the Center for Psychedelic Therapy and Research, CIIS has placed itself in the center of the cutting-edge field of psychedelic studies.