Degree Requirements: Master's degree
Completion Time: 5 to 6 years
Earned Credits: 66
The Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership Specialization is designed for students who want to learn to accomplish in-depth research in a particular aspect of creativity or innovation and make a meaningful contribution as leaders in this important field. Our Humanistic Psychology department encourages students to examine vital contemporary questions about creativity and investigate environments that support different kinds of innovation and creative thought. Students in this specialization focus their studies on areas for which they have passion so that they can take their current careers to the next level or go in a whole new direction.
Saybrook’s unique approach to creativity, innovation, and leadership goes well beyond the arts to encompass “everyday creativity,” or the originality of everyday life, which encourages personal and professional growth as well as potential psychological and health benefits. The program is designed to be applicable to a broad range of the creative professions and their innovative pursuits. This includes the exploration of technology embracing directions in artificial intelligence and virtual reality and augmentation.
While creativity and innovation are increasingly recognized as vital parts of both a healthy psyche and a thriving economy, there are still many unanswered questions that need serious exploration through research and scholarship. General learning goals include understanding the history, research, and practical application of creativity and innovation studies. Students enrolled in this specialization will develop specific learning goals with a faculty member based on their interests, aspirations, and personal trajectory.
At the conclusion of their studies, students in this specialization will be able to:
- Demonstrate marketable skills in general creativity and in specific aspects of creativity and innovation subject matter expertise.
- Work to engage others in efforts to promote life-enhancing changes.
- Bring innovation and creativity to their research, work, and personal choices, moving beyond traditional disciplinary and paradigmatic boundaries.
- Combine critical, empathetic, and creative thinking and leadership skills with self-reflection to develop self-knowledge, self-realization, expansion of consciousness, and embodiment of their choices.
- Place their work within a humanistic perspective across multiple contexts and acknowledge their own biases and unchallenged assumptions.
- Display an awareness of strengths and challenges based on humanistic values, including authenticity and compassion.
Our Ph.D. in Psychology program is intended for professionals who wish to pursue nonclinical careers or expand on their existing licenses. This program is not designed to prepare graduates to qualify for clinical licensure or certification.
More program information can be found in our academic catalog.
Residential Orientation (RO)
All new psychology students begin their studies with our one-time, two-day Residential Orientation (RO). ROs are held two days ahead of the Residential Conference (RC) at the start of the fall and spring semesters in California. Attendance at the entire RO is an academic requirement.
At the RO, students become familiar with the Saybrook culture and academic and support services, including online resources, and the library research services and databases. The challenges of distance and peer learning are also discussed during this time. At the RO, students:
- Consult with the psychology department chair, specialization coordinators, and an academic adviser to organize their degree plan process.
- Develop a rationale for the scope and sequence of their proposed plan of study.
- Plan what consultation they will need from other faculty.
Residential Conference (RC)
Starting with the fall 2021-2022 academic year, all psychology students will be required to attend only the five-day fall RC each academic year. Although you may complete most of your courses through distance learning, all our psychology degree programs have residential requirements. Residential Conferences (RCs) are academic requirements, and their completion is important for your successful academic progress: they allow you to meet with faculty and co-learners in a stimulating and supportive face-to-face environment. Our RCs are an important part of your learning experience as they nurture intellectual and relational creativity, enrich the educational environment, and foster faculty and peer interactions. There are courses being launched, workshops, independent learning activities, peer learning opportunities, community events, and other hands-on experiences intended to nurture professional development, skill building, and transformative change. All students must be on-site on the registration day and remain in residence until the end of the last day of each required conference.
No academic credit is given for attendance at the RC. Students who attend a seminar at an RC and wish to study the topic further may, with the permission of the seminar instructor and department chair, register for an independent study course (ALL 8100) following the RC and receive 1 academic credit upon completion. Each course is individually designed and negotiated with the seminar instructor. Not all RC workshops, courses, and seminars are eligible for the follow-up independent study credit. Students will need to review their program plan to confirm the 1 credit Independent Study will satisfy degree requirements.
Doctoral students attend until they have advanced to doctoral candidacy (upon satisfaction of essay orals).
CIL4500 – Introduction to Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership
The connections between the constructs of creativity, innovation, and creative leadership are studied in relation to socio-cultural influences, gender, organizational structures, and through a lens of transformational and transactional leadership. The course examines creative process models, innovative product development and acquisition along with creative leadership models. Imagery and symbolization, intrapsychic experience, and aesthetic issues are explored inclusive of art-based research. The most recent literature and research related to each construct individually and collectively are reviewed and critiqued. 3 Credits
CIL4510 – Applications of Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership
This course is designed to assist with deeper transfer of knowledge from the theoretical to the applied aspects of utilizing creative process and developing real-life projects that test currently accepted models. Creative leadership is put into practice through group activities and tap into the practical function and use of both transformational and transactional conceptualization. As a post pandemic society, the utilization of complex and effective problem-solving strategies is integral and our survival as a species will require answers to new challenges for individual and international relationships, ecology, economy, education, health, legal system, population growth, the arts, technology, workplace, etc. The development of these concepts in tandem with humanistic and transpersonal psychological tenets will allow for key skill development and marketability that respond to globalized needs. Enhancing knowledge about creativity, innovation and creative leadership will lead to more fruitful research ideas and exploration, potentially closing essential gaps across the literature.
CIL3010 – Arts-Based Inquiry
When a form of inquiry is conceptualized and actualized in terms of creative processes in pursuit of human knowledge, using as its primary means an art medium, it may be termed art-based inquiry. This course examines select forms of thinking about and doing, art-based inquiry, inclusive of its relevance to traditional research processes and forms of scientific inquiry. This course further allows for the exploration of utilizing methodological designs that incorporate the various iterations of “art” as data and outcome resources that make for unique applications across a variety of phenomena. Although preference is given to the visual arts, other art forms will be encouraged for pursuit.
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