MA in Individualized Studies

The low-residency MA in Individualized Studies Program is a 48-credit, interdisciplinary, liberal studies program integrating personal vision with radical thinking and engaged practice. Students in the program design a curriculum uniquely suited to furthering their own personal and professional goals. Individually designed areas of study may combine or go beyond existing disciplines. Learning in the MA in Individualized Studies Program are rigorous, creative, liberating, and responsible within the larger community. As a result, the program is unusual in merging theory, practice, and an evolving self-knowledge.

The format of the program allows students to make use of resources in their home communities and draw on their own backgrounds of experience, while also seeking out learning opportunities new to them. Exceptionally experienced and supportive faculty advisors guide both the development of student’s degree plans and the course of their semester’s study.

Each semester in the MA in Individualized Studies Program begins with an eight-day residency on the Goddard campus in central Vermont. During the residency, students work one-on-one and in small advising groups with their faculty advisor to develop learning goals and plan the work of the semester in an atmosphere that is strongly supportive and encouraging of dynamic, innovative thinking. Students also attend seminars, workshops, minicourses, graduating student presentations, and group discussions, providing opportunities for concentrated learning and a solid basis for independent study during the semester.

The core values of the program are self-knowledge, open-mindedness, awareness of the world, rigorous methodology and a creative process, cultivation of liberation, and responsibility to the local and global community. Students learn how to communicate what they have learned to others, apply it actively to real world situations, and integrate experiential and theoretical learning.

Faculty advisors facilitate and encourage students in their exploration of individual learning needs and goals, in finding their individual focus, and in using their graduate studies in ways that are personally meaningful and socially responsive. In the advising relationship, students experience a unique mentorship that is challenging, supportive, and transformative.