For Immediate Release

Contact: Humanist Institute Executive Director Kristin Wintermute, kwintermute@mninter.net, 763-545-8941

(Washington, DC, April 23, 2013)—Graduate degree transfer credits will now be offered by San Francisco’s Saybrook University to students who complete The Humanist Institute program. The new agreement will award Humanist Institute graduates 15 transfer credits toward the 31 needed for a master’s degree from Saybrook University’s Human Science program within the School of Psychology & Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Those who complete Saybrook master’s program will receive 31 units toward the Human Science PhD degree.

Both programs are extremely well-suited to enter into this positive relationship. The Humanist Institute offers a two-year program that exists “to equip humanists to become effective leaders, spokespersons, and advocates in a variety of organizational settings, including within the humanist movement itself.” The Humanist Institute program includes three nine-day sessions in residence plus inter-session assignments and exams.  This arrangement allows students to complete the certificate program while also maintaining full-time employment or satisfying other significant personal obligations.

Saybrook University offers several accredited graduate degree programs. Saybrook University’s Human Science graduate program exists for students to “develop greater insight into the human experience through the lenses of epistemology and critical social science, and gain insights from discourses in critical theory, cultural criticism, feminism, and post-modernism.”

The agreement with Saybrook University was reached with the assistance of John Burton, a former Dean at Rutgers University, who will serve as Associate Dean of The Humanist Institute.

The President of The Humanist Institute, Jim Craig, stated, “The Institute is deeply grateful to John Burton and Carol Wintermute for their efforts that led to this agreement with Saybrook, and to Saybrook for its recognition of the high quality of the academic efforts of the Institute over the years.”

“I am extremely pleased that Saybrook University will provide Humanist Institute graduates this opportunity to advance their humanist education goals,” Carol Wintermute, Co-Dean of The Humanist Institute, said. “Our graduates who take advantage of the opportunity to enter Saybrook University’s Human Science program will make a positive addition to their student body while becoming even better humanist leaders.”

The Humanist Institute has many supporters of its efforts to enable student to be knowledgeable and effective leaders in their communities, organizations and the humanist movement as a whole.

The idea for the Humanist Institute can be traced to August 1982 when 45 humanist leaders gathered at the University of Chicago to form the North American Committee for Humanism. This alliance was a response to the urgent need to find an effective way to bring the message of humanism to a wider audience. At this meeting the committee voted to establish the The Humanist Institute. Since that time, 17 classes have graduated from the program, providing over a 100 skilled leaders to the humanist community and the larger world. Leaders, for example, have developed local groups, become celebrants performing important life ceremonies, headed up national campaigns to protect Separation of Church and State, started Charter Schools and have run Humanist congregations.

More information about the Humanist Institute can be found at www.humanistinstitute.org. Information on the Saybrook University Human Science program can be found here. The Saybrook University official announcement can be found here http://www.saybrook.edu/academic-affairs/areas/pii/hs. THI graduates and current students may contact Dr. JoAnn McAllister (jmacallister@saybrook.edu), Director of the Human Science program for more information.

Kristin Wintermute

Executive Director, The Humanist Institute

kwintermute@mninter.net

Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity.