Our Mission
The Mission of Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is to prepare a diverse group of outstanding individuals to assume leadership roles in the worldwide community through teaching, research, and practice in selected fields. As its credo, CGU believes:
- Superb instruction, innovative research, and practical experience are the keys to an excellent graduate education.
- Educational institutions have an obligation to become civically engaged in order to enrich and to better society.
- Institutions of higher education must be ethically vigilant, consciously exploring normative and moral issues.
- Knowledge consists of more than facts and has more than merely utilitarian ends; knowledge pursues and reflects values.
- Education is immeasurably enriched by the experience and insight of those outside the educational community.
- Human diversity is indispensable for improving the quality and texture of the educational experience.
- Ongoing education is a lifelong responsibility of the global community’s leaders.
- Advanced education is essential for the well-being and future of an increasingly complex society.
In a dynamic, supportive environment, CGU educates men and women to be experts in their chosen fields, to have discerning judgment, sound ethics, and the cultivated skills needed to lead a wide variety of institutions. Its relatively small size promotes close faculty-student relationships, flexibility in program and course scheduling, rapid curricular response to changing societal and marketplace demands, and cross-disciplinary cooperation and collaboration between scholars and academic programs. To provide this individualized approach to advanced education, CGU strives to offer exceptional services to students through a responsive administration and staff.
Commitment to Diversity
In its educational programs, its admissions and financial aid policies, and its faculty and staff hiring practices, Claremont Graduate University is strongly committed to creating and nurturing an environment that is characterized by diversity. In student selection and in all of its activities and programs, CGU functions without regard to race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or disability. CGU is pleased to welcome a wide variety of students to its programs, including recent college graduates, young professionals, and mid- and late-career men and women who wish to advance further in their current occupations or to change fields.
This diversity of experiences, interests, backgrounds, and aspirations allows a diversity of perspectives that enlivens classroom interaction throughout all CGU programs.
The Nature of the Graduate University
Comprehensive, independent, devoted entirely to graduate study, and a member of The Claremont Colleges consortium, Claremont Graduate University is unlike any graduate-level institution in the nation.
Founded as The Claremont Graduate School in 1925, CGU has achieved a reputation for excellence in the arts, education, the humanities, religion, the social sciences, management, mathematics, and information systems. Today, CGU’s approximately 2,000 full-time and part-time students are enrolled in degree programs in 24 different fields. Most of these programs lead to the Ph.D. Degree.
Although relatively small in size, CGU enjoys the benefits of a larger university. Through its partnership in The Claremont Colleges consortium, Claremont Graduate University manages to achieve the best of two worlds that are often considered mutually exclusive: intimate-scale education, and the facilities and academic breadth of a much larger institution. The Claremont Colleges consortium, a unique concept in American higher education, includes CGU and nationally known undergraduate institutions—Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, Pomona College, and Scripps College—and the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.
Each of the seven institutions has its own student body, faculty, administration, campus, and curricular emphasis, style, and mission. Yet, they are on contiguous campuses in the pleasant Southern California community of Claremont, and they cooperate to provide university-scale services and facilities, including a two million-volume library system, health and counseling centers, ethnic centers, an interfaith chaplaincy, and a performing arts complex. In addition, the Claremont School of Theology and the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden are affiliated with the Graduate University.
Because many of the faculty members from the undergraduate colleges and affiliated institutions participate actively in the Graduate University’s programs, CGU students benefit from potential access to a faculty of far greater breadth than any other 2,000-student institution could offer.
Transdisciplinary Study
Students at CGU are encouraged to pursue academic interests and research agendas that cross the traditional boundaries between individual programs and disciplines. Graduate education at CGU features both the disciplinary training and specialization appropriate to the master’s or doctoral degree, as well as opportunities for course work and research that make real connections across multiple perspectives.
In addition to the opportunity to select courses and work with faculty outside of a specific school or department, students may select formal dual degree programs, simultaneously completing two degrees. For example, recent graduates have earned the Master of Business Administration degree and the Ph.D. In Psychology. Students may also propose interfield degree programs that combine two disciplinary fields in one degree. For example, a recent graduate earned a Ph.D. in Political Science and Religion. Other resources include transdisciplinary student research and dissertation awards.
In 2004, the CGU faculty implemented a revision to the doctoral program by which all doctoral students will take a least one transdisciplinary seminar (see the description in the “Doctoral of Philosophy Degree ” section in this Bulletin). By integrating the transdisciplinary approach to scholarship, teaching, and research into the graduate curriculum,CGU has made a commitment to create an enriched teaching and research environment for students and faculty that encourages and facilitates the process of following an idea or a problem across a wide range of disciplines to discover new and innovative connections, perspectives, and solutions.
Academic Programs
For institutes, programs, and projects affiliated with each school, please refer to the web at www.cgu.edu/programs.
School of Arts and Humanities
Applied Women’s Studies, M.A.
Art, M.F.A., M.A.
Arts and Cultural Management*, M.A.
Cultural Studies, M.A., Ph.D.
English, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
History, M.A., Ph.D.
History and Archival Studies, M.A.
Literature and Creative Writing, M.A.
Literature and Film, M.A.
Music, M.A., D.C.M., D.M.A., Ph.D.
Philosophy, M.A., Ph.D.
Africana Studies, Certificate
School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences
Human Resources Design, M.S.
Psychology, M.A., Ph.D.
Public Policy and Evaluation*, M.A.
Advanced Study of Evaluation, Certificate
School of Educational Studies
Education, M.A., Ph.D., joint Ph.D. with SDSU
Teacher Education Internship Program, M.A./Credential
School of Information Systems and Technology
Health Information Management, M.S.
Information Systems and Technology, M.S., Ph.D.
Information Systems – Management, Certificate
Information Systems – Technical, Certificate
Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management
Arts and Cultural Management*, M.A.
Executive Management, Certificate, M.A., M.S., E.M.B.A.
Financial Engineering*, M.S., Ph.D.
Management, M.A., M.S., M.B.A.
Politics, Economics and Business*, M.A.
School of Mathematical Sciences
Computational and Systems Biology, joint Ph.D. with KGI
Computational Science, joint Ph.D. with SDSU
Engineering and Industrial Applied Mathematics, Joint Ph.D. with CSULB
Financial Engineering*, M.S., Ph.D.
Mathematics, M.A., M.S., Ph.D.
School of Politics and Economics
Economics, M.A., Ph.D.
International Political Economy, M.A.
International Studies, M.A.
Political Science, Ph.D.
Politics, M.A.
Politics, Economics and Business*, M.A.
Public Policy, M.A.
Public Policy and Evaluation*, M.A.
Economic Development, Certificate
School of Religion
Islamic Studies, M.A.
Religion, M.A., Ph.D.
Women’s Studies in Religion, M.A.
* Jointly Offered Programs
Arts and Cultural Management, M.A.
Financial Engineering, M.S., Ph.D.
Politics, Economics and Business, M.A.
Public Policy and Evaluation, M.A.
Independent Program
Botany, M.S., Ph.D.
* jointly offered programs |