Undergraduate Studies

Nick Blanc ’26 left a fulfilling career in homeless services to pursue undergraduate education at CIIS rooted in ancestral wisdom, indigenous traditions, and community healing.

Preschool teacher Linette Illastron returned to school after a decade and rediscovered her voice, her strength, and her passion for learning at CIIS.

Groundbreaking clinic delivers affordable, clinically supervised psychedelic therapy while training the next generation of practitioners

CIIS marked its 58th anniversary with community-wide celebration, collective art-making, and the President's Service Distinction Awards.

After a decade in early childhood education and twenty years away from school, Heather Miller found renewed purpose through CIIS' Bachelor of Science in Psychology.

Discover how degree completion programs offer flexible pathways for adult learners to finish their bachelor's degree.

What if the questions that draw us to learning could also reshape who we become? Across disciplines and life paths, curiosity emerges as sacred work, an opening into connection, healing, and transformation.

Senior Lecturer Cosmin Gheorghe shares how CIIS' Bachelor of Science in Psychology helps students connect disciplines and find meaning in a fragmented world.

Explore CIIS’ groundbreaking Bachelor’s program and the bold vision behind its creation.

B.S. in Psychology graduating student Dominic Bucci delivered one of two student reflections at CIIS’ 57th Commencement Ceremony.

In this episode, 86th generation Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong is joined by CIIS Associate Professor Sonya Shah for an illuminating conversation exploring spiritual activism and how to envision co-creating new worlds from one in crisis.

They discuss Norma’s latest book, When No Thing Works, in which she inquiries into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration and explores ways we can step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 22nd, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Multiple major news outlets covered CIIS’ new Bachelor of Science in Psychedelic Studies and the University’s tradition of excellence in consciousness research.

Zara Zimbardo and Lily Stone collaborated on the new album Marsification: A tale of planetary grief, featured on Radio 4’s Short Cuts.

CIIS to launch the first-ever undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Psychedelic Studies offering, planned to begin in fall 2025.

Alec MacLeod, long-time CIIS Professor, shares his thoughts about teaching, his students, and reflects on his recent retirement 

With over 20 years of experience practicing and teaching Kingian Nonviolence, leading trainer Kazu Haga offers a practical approach to resolving conflict first practiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement. In his work, Kazu reclaims the energy and assertiveness of nonviolent practice and shows that a principled approach to nonviolence is the way to transform not only unjust systems, but broken relationships.

In this episode, Kazu Haga is joined by CIIS professor and restorative justice expert Sonya Shah for a conversation about his life, Kingian Nonviolence, and his book, Healing Resistance.

This episode contains explicit language. This episode was recorded at a live event in front of a live audience at CIIS in February 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

A discussion with Professor Charlotte María Sáenz about community education, collective responsibility, philosophy and imagining brighter futures for students.

Yung Pueblo’s (Diego Perez) path to deep healing began after years of drug use had taken a toll on his mind and body. Searching for a way forward, he found that by honestly examining and addressing the anxieties and fears that he had been running away from, he no longer felt like a stranger inside of his heart and mind. Once he dedicated himself to meditation and trusting his intuition, he started to finally feel mentally lighter—with more love emerging from within. This was not an easy journey, and it's one that he is still on, but it showed him that real healing is possible.

In this episode, Damali Robertson joins Diego for an inspiring conversation exploring how we can all move forward in our healing—from learning self-compassion to letting go, to becoming emotionally mature. Drawing upon insights from his life and latest book, Lighter, Diego shares that as our minds begin to stop feeling overburdened with tension, we can reconnect with the present, and the world around us will become more inviting, crisp, and newly vibrant.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco on October 14th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Some adults struggle to communicate with students who have autism and try to “fix them.” But what if we found a way to help these students use their natural gifts to convey their thoughts and feelings?

Chris Martin, an award-winning poet and celebrated educator, works with non speaking autistic children and adults, teaching them to write poetry. In his latest book, May Tomorrow Be Awake, Chris introduces the techniques he uses in the classroom and celebrates an inspiring group of young neurodiverse thinkers and their electric verse.

In this episode, queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker has a conversation with Chris about the mind, language, human potential, and the lessons we can learn from one another.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 18th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Author, Black feminist, and social justice activist adrienne maree brown has been talking, writing, and celebrating the intersection of pleasure and activism since her much-lauded 2019 book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.

In this episode, CIIS professor and restorative justice expert sonya shah joins adrienne for a powerful and joyful conversation exploring how to tap into the full spectrum of our sensual desires and emotional needs while organizing for justice.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 12, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

As the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means.

In this episode, community leader and lawyer Zach Norris is joined in a conversation with CIIS professor and restorative justice expert sonya shah about how we can shift our mindset and embrace a new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment.

This episode contains mentions of violence and death by suicide. This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 23, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Journalist Celeste Headlee is joined by CIIS professor Zara Zimbardo to discuss ways to have meaningful conversations in a politically and socially polarized time.

This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on February 22nd, 2018.  A transcript is available below.

New Chair of School of Undergraduate Studies on the Integral Future

In these pandemic times, and times of racial justice uprising and reckoning, the failure of U.S. and global health care systems to meet human need or to even ensure the basic safety of health care providers continues to be revealed. How did we get here?

In this episode, CIIS faculty and multi-sector social justice organizer Mordecai Ettinger offers an exploration of the hidden history of white supremacy and colonization embedded in the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC)—a web of institutions—from hospitals, dialysis centers, and nursing homes, to health insurers, big pharma, and the corporate polluters that they are entangled with.

Mordecai addresses the myriad ways in which the MIC generates, perpetuates, and upholds ableism—particularly racialized medical ableism—as among the most dangerously violent and destructive forces of our times. Finally, Mordecai offers a vision for hope, a path forward for transforming the MIC and creating alternatives for health and healing, a crucial part of humanity’s collective liberation in which we all have a role to play.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on September 30, 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

The stress, conflict, and crises of the outer world are a signal: the time has come to awaken your inner shaman. However, you don’t need to be initiated into concealed mysteries to answer the call from Spirit. Internationally renowned shamanic teacher Marcela Lobos teaches us how to use the maps offered by the shamanic Medicine Wheel and the hero’s journey to activate our inner wisdom and live a self-realized existence of discovery, healing, and wholeness.

In this episode, CIIS faculty and psychologist Susana Bustos has a conversation with Marcela about her life, her work, and her latest book: Awakening Your Inner Shaman: A Woman's Journey of Self-Discovery through the Medicine Wheel.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 14, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Disability is often described as a tragedy, a crisis, or an aberration even though 1 in 5 people worldwide have or will have a disability. Why is this common human experience rendered exceptional? Disability studies scholar Jennifer Natalya Fink argues that this originates in our families.

Weaving together stories of members of her own family with socio-historical research, in her latest book, All Our Families, Jennifer illustrates how the eradication of disabled people from family narratives is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems inherited from Nazis. Inspired by queer and critical race theory, Jennifer calls for a lineage of disability: a reclamation of disability as a history, a culture, and an identity.

In this episode, autistic Mestiza, critical educator, and disability studies scholar-activist Sara M. Acevedo joins Jennifer for a conversation that challenges us to reconnect disability within the family as a means of repair toward a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 7th, 2022. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Over the past 17 years, queer autistic author and educator Nick Walker has played a key role in the emergence of the neurodiversity paradigm—a framework for scholarship, practice, and social justice work where treating human neurocognitive variations such as autism, dyslexia, and ADHD as medical disorders is understood to be a form of systemic oppression along the same lines as the pathologizing of homosexuality in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this episode, Dr. Walker is joined by writer Dan Glenn in an uplifting conversation exploring her newest book, Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. They also discuss the edges and intersections of neurodiversity, gender, Queer Theory, embodiment, creativity, somatic psychology, and the human capacity for transformation.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 16th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Through his yoga teaching and writing, Jacoby Ballard explores the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. He offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations and sequences for processing and healing from trauma both individually and in community.

In this episode, queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker talks with Jacoby about his latest book, A Queer Dharma and the possibilities for finding an unapologetically queer path towards true healing and transformation.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 18th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Discover how CIIS' School of Undergraduate Studies adapted to help students address today’s unique challenges with Bachelor Completion Programs.

Counseling astrologer, writer, and CIIS alumna, Chani Nicholas talks about the path that lead her to CIIS and her social justice approach to astrology

Chani Nicholas is a beloved astrologer and queer feminist activist with a loyal online following. For her, astrology isn’t about passively accepting our fate, it’s about action. In her inspirational and socially conscious weekly horoscopes, she encourages her devotees to take control—to confront themselves, their desires, and their needs—to fulfill their potential using the power of the stars.

Recorded live on February 20, 2020 at the Herbst Theatre shortly after the release of her book You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance, this episode features Chani in three parts. Beginning with a chart-reading and conversation with Fania E. Davis, a leading national voice on restorative justice, followed by a conversation with CIIS Professor Sonya Shah, and finishing with questions submitted by the audience.

In this episode, Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future, talks with internet pioneer and renowned filmmaker Tiffany Shlain about her strategy for living in our 24/7 world: turning off all screens for 24 hours each week.

She and her family call it “Technology Shabbat” or “Living 24/6”. Over the past decade, this weekly practice has completely changed their lives—giving them more time, productivity, connection, and presence.

This episode was recorded during an event on December 5, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Bachelor Completion Program Alum Regina Louise on History, Hope, and Her New Movie

Civil rights activist, former Black Panther leader, and educator Ericka Huggins is joined in conversation by CIIS professor and restorative justice expert Sonya Shah. 

This episode is presented in collaboration with Bioneers and the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 8, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

One of the leading thinkers in the emergent field of neurodiversity, CIIS faculty member Nick Walker, discusses the benefits of a more neurodiverse world. This talk was part of the Big Ideas at CIIS series.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 13, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

CIIS faculty Zara Zimbardo explores our enduring interest in zombies, and examines what this increasingly normalized pop culture obsession points to. This talk was part of the Big Ideas at CIIS series.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 21, 2016.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Comedian, writer, and actress Zahra Noorbakhsh is joined by CIIS faculty member Zara Zimbardo for a conversation that explores being Muslim in America today, and how to counter discrimination with comedy.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 25, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Author and journalist Jo Piazza is joined in conversation by CIIS professor Nicolle Zapien to explore wedding and marriage rituals, customs, and traditions throughout the world.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 31, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Indie game developer turned social activist Zoë Quinn is joined by CIIS faculty Zara Zimbardo for a rare public conversation about her experience at the center of the Gamergate controversy and her journey to overcome it by working to make the internet a better, safer place for everyone.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 27, 2017 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Pioneering Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Magdalena Yesil came to the United States in 1976 with two suitcases and $43, unaware of the challenges she would face as an immigrant woman. 

In this episode, Magdalena is joined by CIIS professor Sara Salazar for a conversation about her life and the lessons she learned breaking glass ceilings to rise to the top in Silicon Valley and beyond.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 14, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

A student's mom writes about the unique and transformative degree.

CIIS graduate Luis Aroche knows firsthand what an education means to a person caught up in the cycle of violence and incarceration: Everything.

Zoe Bender, alumna of the Bachelor’s Completion and Master of Fine Arts programs at CIIS, was chosen as a 2014 Newman Civic Fellow by Campus Compact.

Scholarship assisted workforce in San Francisco