Degree Requirements: Master’s degree from an accredited institution
Completion Time: 4-5 years
Earned Credits: 63
Saybrook University’s Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change program focuses on preparing graduates to possess the skills to become successful policy advocates and leaders in nonprofit organizations—focusing on human rights, community building, peace, the environment, and social justice. Guided by faculty with years of research and advocacy experience, transformative social change students will learn how to:
- Design environments and processes that support participation and democratic collaboration
- Design strategies that will lead to social transformation
- Articulate global, multicultural, multi-generational, social, and environmental viewpoints
- Appraise models of compassion and connectedness with the larger community
As reflective scholar-practitioners, Transformative Social Change graduates will have the opportunity to apply humanistic values to help create transformative change in society. The online Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change degree is considered a research degree, one in which students can become experts in developing their own research to make new contributions to the field and to society.
In addition, graduates of Saybrook’s Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change program will be prepared to work in organizations in a variety of roles, including program development, policy advocacy, public relations, program director, outreach, fieldwork, and faculty. Potential employers could include such organizations as Amnesty International USA, Sierra Club, Greenpeace Mediterranean, and the United Nations, as well as community-based organizations focused on similar goals.
More program information can be found in our academic catalog.
Residential Orientation
All new students in the M.A. and Ph.D. Transformative Social Change degree programs begin their studies with our one-time, two-day Residential Orientation (RO). ROs are held two days ahead of the Residential Conference at the start of the fall and spring semesters in California. Attendance at the entire RO is an academic requirement.
Residential Conference
All students are also required to attend a five-day Residential Conference (RC) held off campus at the beginning of each semester. These RCs offer didactic/topical, research, and practice-oriented seminars, in-person sessions introducing each core course in the program, and group meetings of the program as a whole. The RCs also involve informal exchanges with other students and program faculty for mentoring and socialization to the field.
Residential Conference Requirement
M.A. students are required to attend the RC until formally enrolled in a master’s thesis or project. Doctoral students are required to attend until they have advanced to doctoral candidacy (upon satisfaction of essay orals).
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 register, with the permission of the seminar instructor and the department chair, for a 1-credit independent study course (ALL 8100) following the RC. 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.
TSC 6610 – Social System Transformation Theory
The aim of this course is to empower students to critically evaluate social systems and become participants in the co-creation and transformation of those systems. The course enables students to recognize and analyze social systems and societal paradigms as they present themselves in various domains of human experience, develop a critical understanding of how humanistic values, developmental ideas and norms can be applied to social systems, and develop the ability to create strategies for changes in such systems and norms so that they will improve the well-being of the people who participate in them. 3 credit(s)
TSC 6570 – Race, Class, and Gender
None of us live our lives through linear or exclusive experiences of race, class, or gender. Instead, we exist through multiplicities of identity that are informed through race, class, and gender, as well as other social determinants. Human diversity, increasingly framed in terms of intersectionality—focused on the mutual interrelatedness of central social categorizations such as gender, ethnicity/race, social class and sexualit(ies)—is becoming more prominent in research, scholarship, and practice. The goal for this course is modest: to expand our awareness of how race, class, and gender shape our lives, historically and in the present day. If this heightened awareness leads to changes in the way we talk with and about each other, represent others, provide services, and live our lives on a day-to-day basis, then the course will have more than satisfied its intent. 3 credit(s)
TSC 7116 – Global Civil Society Activism and Social Change
This course will explore the role of global social movements and other civil society efforts in support of transformative change. The course will review current and historical efforts toward global solidarity, including movements in support of human rights, multicultural inclusion, social justice, ecological sustainability, and peace. The course will focus on exploration of initiatives—from local to transnational—that address issues, social problems, and social goods through a global lens. It will also provide an opportunity to explore solidarity, including intersectional solidarity, across various social movements. 3 credit(s)
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