BA in Health Arts and Sciences

Bridging Nature, Culture and Healing

Welcome from Program Director Suzanne Richman

The low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences is a 120 credit program open to upper division students who have already completed approximately 60 liberal arts credits. Students may be eligible to earn advanced standing through a combination of transfer credits and/or credits awarded for prior learning experiences through Goddard’s Assessment of Prior Learning process. Students just beginning their undergraduate studies can begin in Goddard’s low residency BA in Individualized Studies Program, before transferring to the low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences Program.

 

The low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences: Bridging Nature, Culture and Healing inspires students to gain new tools to actively help restore wholeness and health to people and their communities. Students build their self-directed study through a synthesis of integrative health studies, holistic sciences, multi-cultural and social justice perspectives, and an active engagement with self-care and contemplative practices. This integral approach enables students to create resilience and sustainability. Students in the low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences Program challenge themselves to reflect deeply, create meaningful relationships, and develop the resources that are needed to foster healing through personal transformation and radical social change.

 

Work of the Program

The low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences Program: Bridging Nature, Culture and Healing is a progressive haven for learning within a supportive community of peers and advisors. Experiential learning in the program integrates rigorous scholarship with direct action and rich contemplation. Students build their study plans within eight-day residencies and then carry out their learning plans within their communities. They document their learning through five packets sent to their advisors over the course of each 15-week semester. Packets includes materials such as reflective, critical or creative writing, journal passages, creative artwork, audio-visual materials, and other means of documentation and reflection. Internships or apprenticeships may also be integrated into students’ study plans to augment or deepen fields of inquiry.

 

Experiential studies pursued within the low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences program might include teaching classes, developing health curricula, or engaging in outreach efforts in such places as holistic centers, public schools, youth programs, hospitals, and natural world environments. Some students develop web sites, publish books or articles, or begin organizations. At the culmination of their course of study, students synthesize their work in a final project that may take the form of a community outreach project or encompass traditional scholarship, depending on the interests of the student.

 

The Faculty

Low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences Program: Bridging Nature, Culture, and Healing faculty advisors work with students one-on-one and in small groups to advise and facilitate each unique study process. Students work closely with their advisor and other faculty members during each week long residency and exchange detailed written packets with their advisor during the 15-week semester that follows. Offering progressive real world experience, dedicated support, and rich academic backgrounds, faculty members guide students to broaden and deepen their knowledge through regenerative discourse, and to discover greater skills and self-expression through experiential learning and action.

 

Low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences Program faculty are active in their fields, working as scholars, community health educators, international and public health workers, consultants, holistic practitioners and therapists, nurses, activists, organizers, artists, psychologists and anthropologists. They provide an inspired learning environment in which students cultivate their vision and leadership abilities to transform their own lives while bringing their Health Arts work into their community.

 

“It is a joy to work at Goddard as a faculty member and witness the love, commitment, attention, and expertise devoted to nurturing students in their explorations built upon their questions. The students too bring with them remarkable skills, experience, curiosity, and creativity. The atmosphere at a residency vibrates with humor, play, companionship, critical thinking, searching, and concern for the world. There is a lively enthusiasm for each student as an individual, a scholar, and an actor in the process of transformation of self and the world. It is a community animated by shared passion and respect, a community of reflection and support toward students’ ideas, discoveries, and professional development. It is a community that earnestly strives to think, feel, and act out of the values it holds dear. As an eco-psychologist I am ever in search of models for healthier ways of living and perceiving that will help us to restore our deep connectedness with the rich, complex, living universe, which is the source of our vitality. I see such a model, as an ongoing co-creative process, at Goddard. I see it in the dynamic appreciation of difference, with the rich panoply of possibility that provides, and in the recognition that, while each is unique, we are all one. And I see it in the consciousness people carry to understanding conflict, with a determination to develop responses together--in our words, our works, our relationships, and our internal dialogue--that will help us to contribute to individual, social, and global health and evolution."  --- Health Arts and Sciences Faculty Member Susan Pearson

 

“Some adult learning theorists say that all learning is change. But, not all change is transformative. Those of us who have considerable experience in settings committed to meaningful, emancipatory education recognize that learning at Goddard is transformative. One of the primary reasons for this is the unusual nature of the mentoring relationships established between learners and advisors. These connections allow for deep immersion in specific areas of inquiry­--with reliable, supple and sturdy support.~ Witnessing a learner’s vision taking shape is such a deeply humane and hopeful venture that this kind of experience can be life changing for both parties. We, as faculty, guide our communities of learners, individually and together, to experiences of “moral relatedness”­--a “mutual and respectful dialogue” that honors lived experience, personally meaningful inquiries­--that are grounded in critical reflection and connected with the larger world. We invoke Dewey, Friere, Lindeman, Knowles, hooks, Lorde, Rich, Perez, Aragon--any number of influences­--for this kind of learning. And the result makes for internal and external events of such profound dynamism, creativity, compassion, rigor, and vitality­ that our graduates, our faculty, our staff, our administration and our trustees develop a loyalty that is evident to all who encounter us. And those who have such experiences begin to envision other places and situations that could benefit from a “moral relatedness” that can sustain social growth and global changes that are also just and humane.~ This is mentorship of the highest order; learners invite us into some of the richest work of their lives and we are all changed in profound and deeply meaningful ways." --- Health Arts and Sciences Faculty Member S.B. Sowbel

 

The Residency

Low residency BA in Health Arts and Sciences students begin each semester with an eight-day intensive residency on the Goddard campus in Central Vermont. Each residency functions as a supportive and expansive face-to-face social environment whose purpose is to define and support the work of the semester. BA students work with their faculty advisor, network with other students, attend workshops that address degree requirements, develop academic skills, and explore a range of health arts and sciences issues and practices.

 

Keynote presentations offered during residencies investigate the cultural and/or ecological context of healing, including: “Embracing an Ethic of Care,” “Healing as if the Earth Mattered,” and “Healing with the Natural and Sacred World.” The residency also provides a place to share hidden aspirations within a positive learning climate where “we can think the world together.”