Interviews with Graduates

Students come to the low residency MA in Individualized Studies Program with diverse and unique approaches to their lives and their studies. Graduates of Goddard's low residency MA in Individualized Studies Program are passionate, engaged, committed thinkers and innovators who make a difference in their world. In the interviews below, graduates talk about their low residency MA studies and share excerpts from their thesis projects.

Interview with Juliana Borrero

Juliana Borrero

Creative Writing and Comparative Literature

Contemporary Theory

Women's Studies

"In this program I was asked: 'What do you want? What do you want to do with all this?' "

Interview with Michael Deragon

Michael Deragon

Surrealism

Writing

"While attending Goddard I studied with three amazingly powerful and unique women who altered my writing, my music, my focus and, most importantly, my perspective."

Interview with Anna Hawkins

Anna Hawkins

Psychology and Literature

Women's Studies

Embodiment Studies

"Being able to work towards a master's degree without having to uproot myself was such a blessing."

Interview with Lynn Larned

Consciousness Studies Concentration

"I had always wanted to earn my master's degree but was not interested in a traditional program. Goddard's low residency MA in Individualized Studies Program allowed me to concentrate on what I was most interested in. My advisors were excellent guides in helping me to plan a course of study..."

Interview with Sebastian Marino

Sebastian Marino

Environmental Studies Concentration

"At Goddard I was able to design my own study program - which for me meant finding ways to validate what I knew while at the same time acquiring the theoretical base necessary for professional recognition. None of my Goddard experience was isolated ivory tower theory, it was all practical."

Interview with Nancy Morgan

Transformative Language Arts Concentration

"After writing my way through personal crises, leading workshops and witnessing the empowerment people experienced after a day of expressive writing, and after enduring professional careers at odds with my own passions, it was time for Goddard."

Interview with Susan Moul

Embodiment Studies

Writing

"My whole life I'd had the sense that Goddard is where people go to become revolutionaries. And I knew I would learn what I needed to learn and it wouldn't be about just running all the bases to get the piece of paper."

Interview with Rhonda Patzia

Transformative Language Arts Concentration

Embodiment Studies

"What Goddard gave me was an extended, longterm passion - an on-fireness - that I never felt before. It began when I started to read female and feminist writers, and it directed what I wanted to study."

Interview with Claudia Turnbull

Consciousness Studies Concentration

"I had found myself at the point in life when it was time to take a deeper look at my belief systems and practices. I knew what I wanted to study but needed an academic setting and direction to plug into. It was time to put my questions and passions on the table and look at what was meaningful from new perspectives."

Interview with Hillary Webb

Consciousness Studies Concentration

"I had been looking into graduate programs, mostly those in the departments of various "traditional" universities. While most of them offered the academic rigor I craved, they did so at the expense of personal experience as a way of knowing. These programs were all head and no heart and I wanted both."