Principles/Values
Our principles and values reflect Saybrook’s commitment to keeping alive the spirit of innovative and creative approaches to complex challenges. We encourage our community of inclusive learners to challenge and offer alternative solutions to today’s mainstream axioms–fostering positive social transformation.
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Principle 1
Responsible
We value life and embrace our responsibility to facilitate the potential of every living being to thrive in a just, inclusive, healthy, and sustainable world.
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Principle 2
Transformative
We are scholar-practitioners who seek and apply knowledge to solve problems and foster social transformation.
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Principle 3
Ethical
We live and conduct our affairs with integrity. We hold ourselves accountable for honoring commitments to ourselves and to one another, to Saybrook University, and to the constituencies and communities within which we live and work, including the natural world.
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Principle 4
Rigorous
We insist upon operational and academic rigor in order to provide an exceptional educational experience for you.
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Principle 5
Diverse
We seek diversity because we recognize that there are many ways of knowing and there are inherent strengths in multiple perspectives.
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Principle 6
Interconnected
We approach what we do with systems, or holistic, perspective based on a belief in the inherent interconnection of all things.
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Principle 7
Compassionate
We create relationships and communities built on compassion, respect, authentic voice, deep listening, reflective awareness, support, and challenge leading to responsible action.
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Principle 8
Creative
We are creative, risk-taking leaders who challenge assumptions and imagine new possibilities.
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Principle 9
Aware
We recognize that dynamic tensions and fundamental paradoxes are essential aspects of being human and we commit to find ways to work with them productively.
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Principle 10
Celebratory
We celebrate life, striving to bring fun and joy to our individual and collective existence.
Our Humanistic History
Our roots are directly entwined with the roots of humanistic psychology itself. The concept was first introduced by some of the most influential voices in the field at the Old Saybrook Conference in 1964. Visionaries from that conference, including Rollo May and Charlotte Bühler among others, would go on to establish the Humanistic Psychology Institute, our original name.
Born from the very minds who devised humanistic psychology, Saybrook continues their legacy of humanistic values and academic rigor.
Saybrook Learning Model
A coffee shop in the morning, a work desk during your lunch break, your kitchen table in the evening—our online learning community is with you wherever and whenever you decide to bring it. For programs that require in-person residency, our hybrid-online format supplements the synchronous and asynchronous elements with in-person, residential learning experiences focused on career development, building practical skills, and connecting face-to-face with your classmates, faculty members, and the wider Saybrook community.
Academic Programs
Built on evidence-based and humanistic principles that have guided us since 1971, Saybrook’s academic programs immerse you in and expand upon the established science of yesterday and today by integrating a holistic, mind-body-spirit approach to the fields of counseling, integrative social work, integrative and functional nutrition, mind-body medicine, psychology, clinical psychology, psychophysiology, and transformative social change.
Mission Statement
Saybrook University relentlessly pursues a socially just, sustainable world by educating humanistic leaders who transform their fields and communities.