Mission

The Graduate Institute's mission is to create learning communities in which graduate study enriches the spirit, promotes philosophic discovery, provides opportunities for interpersonal and organizational change and encourages intellect through the exploration of contemporary ideas. The Institute is dedicated to identifying, describing, developing and implementing graduate programs in emerging fields of inquiry.  Through a series of process-centered collaborative events, The Institute serves mature learners by engaging exceptional thinkers and practitioners as faculty, by challenging individual beliefs, by providing cognitive dissonant learning experiences, by promoting generative and transdisciplinary thinking through the integration of content, and by delivering unique curricula within a cohort design.

Vision

The enormous cultural and intellectual expansion that ushered in the twenty-first century is well beyond the comprehension of any single individual. In the limited opportunities of individuals and organizations, there are few opportunities for a comprehensive exploration of reality.

The human condition is shaped by the need to create meaning in an environment characterized by chaos. This meaning, steeped in the spiritual, emotional and intellectual evolution of the species, gives rise to promises of greatness and hope. It is the complexity of human reactions that drives the species toward the fulfillment of its destiny: that is, complexity compels us to pursue learning as a biological imperative, to reach for higher good while mired in the commonality of daily life, and to fulfill the unspoken promise of a life founded in spirit and intellect, and dedicated to the evolution of human potential. As the dissonance that pervades consciousness produces the sense of an incomprehensible world, it also serves as the impetus that drives thinking, creativity, and behavior. This results in our striving to resolve, and in our dedication to flow* towards the construction of meaning.

It is from this perspective that The Graduate Institute envisions its potential as a portal through which individuals may freely enter into their development, approach the nuances of undeclared motivations, come together as a community of generative souls, and strive to search for an enlightened and hopeful life. The Institute's programs, with their unique perspectives on intellectual, cultural, spiritual and emotional forces, exist to serve humanity as a learning continuum through which we may evolve. The inextricable linkage of The Graduate Institute's vision to essential human processes is manifest in its service to colleagues who search for intellectual and personal transformation. The Institute simultaneously provides a basis for that foresightedness which acts to focus the body politic on its continuing effort towards cultural evolution and revolution.

*Flow, as defined by Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi, in his book by the same title.