Courses

2019 Summer Courses

BTI 503 Old Testament Genre

This course is an introduction to Old Testament scripture from the perspective of its literary genres. Students examine six major genres: theological history, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, and apocalyptic writing. The characteristics of these genres are discussed and students are exposed to extra-biblical examples of each type. Application of the insights from this approach to the study of the Old Testament, to contemporary life, ministry and mission will be included.

BTI 522 Feminist/Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics

The semi-seminar course studies feminist and womanist theories and their application to biblical interpretation. We will examine feminist theoretical works with special attention to complex relationship between sexism and other binary modes of "isms" such as racism, heterosexism, and (neo)colonialism and then explore various strategies for applying theoretical insights to ethical biblical interpretation.

BTI 530 Textual Synthesis I: Examination of the Book of Ruth

Prerequisites: BTI 502, BTI 511
An introduction to exegetical methods and tools commonly used in the study of the Hebrew scriptures. An eclectic selection of biblical texts will be used to illustrate the various approaches. Students will prepare brief reports on texts and produce a final project that synthesizes the history of a text’s reception with their own contemporary location and commitments.

CSL 503 Professional Ethics: Honoring the Other

Prerequisites: CSL 528, CSL 551, CSL 552 and CSL 542
The student receives an overview of professional ethics and Washington State law as applied to counseling. Students are encouraged to examine their ethical decision-making processes in light of the difficult decisions facing the professional counselor. The course provides instruction regarding widely accepted ethical norms as well as common legal regulations. Additional topics will include professionalism, licensure, moral responsibility and issues of power.

CSL 509 Multicultural Perspectives: Race & Culture

Dates still pending. This course is designed to increase students' cultural competence by deepening their awareness of self and how they have been socialized to think about groups who are culturally similar and different from them. Students develop in their understanding of racial tensions that exist across cultures by examining their own stereotypes, attitudes, values, preconceived notions, behaviors and assumptions. Power, privilege and race are explored as well as their impact on racial minorities. Lecture, class discussions, video, reading and interactive group activities are used as a catalyst to promote personal and professional growth.

CSL 516B Research: the Dialogical Context of Knowledge

This course is an introduction to psychological research. The student is introduced to quantitative and qualitative research designs and statistical methodologies. Research is studied in its dialogical context: researcher to subject, researcher to interpretation, and researcher to the community within which the research is relevant. Students will also receive guidance and practice in the use of research to inform their therapeutic work. This course also includes a required Research Symposium Saturday June 22, 2019.

CSL 516C Research: the Dialogical Context of Knowledge

This course is an introduction to psychological research. The student is introduced to quantitative and qualitative research designs and statistical methodologies. Research is studied in its dialogical context: researcher to subject, researcher to interpretation, and researcher to the community within which the research is relevant. Students will also receive guidance and practice in the use of research to inform their therapeutic work. This course also includes a required Research Symposium Saturday June 22, 2019.

CSL 518B Group Therapy: The Healing Context of Community

This course considers group psychotherapy from relationally based theoretical and theological perspectives and is informed by theological paradigms. The course covers group development and common group dynamics as well as techniques of intervention and leadership principles appropriate to various group stages.

CSL 518C Group Therapy: The Healing Context of Community

This course considers group psychotherapy from relationally based theoretical and theological perspectives and is informed by theological paradigms. The course covers group development and common group dynamics as well as techniques of intervention and leadership principles appropriate to various group stages.

CSL 524 Introduction to Counseling Children & Adolescents

Prerequisite: CSL 510
This course utilizes a didactic and experiential format in which to explore therapeutic work with children and adolescents. Through reading, class-time, and role-play, this course provides a foundation to facilitate the growth and development of the student's clinical work with children and adolescents. Clinical work with children and adolescents will be considered from a bio-psychosocial perspective with special emphasis on developmental, attachment, and systemic issues as relevant to today's children and adolescent culture.
Friday & Saturday - May 10th/11th & 17th/18th.

CSL 531 Internship II

Prerequisites: CSL 530
The course is a continuation of the internship experience.

RLM 510 Leadership in Organizations I: Personal Influence in the Service of Transformation

This course will examine the importance of Christian Leadership with regard to personal leadership in multiple contexts - primarily the church, parachurch and non-profit settings. It will explore the importance of character, discover different leadership styles, explore gender issues and give a theological framework for leadership. Recognizing that leadership while anchored in some principles exists in context, the student will learn to discern their place in leadership within specific environments.
This class meets Tuesdays May 7, 14, 21, 28, & June 4, Thursdays May 9, 23, 30, & June 6 as well as one Friday, June 7 from 11-4.

RLM 516 Social Entrepreneurship

This course will examine how old ways of doing business are becoming new ways of helping. Students will be introduced to the intersecting worlds of business and human services. Discover how the soul of a business can heal the heart of a community.

SFD 575A Special Topics

Journey to the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, April 28-May 3, 2019, where we will immerse ourselves in the ancient Christian tradition of desert spirituality, exploring the contemplative path and learning from this fierce and unique landscape. Each day of our journey will contain elements of contemplation, group reflection, and exploration, with regular rhythms of communal practice and plenty of free time to experience the desert way of life. This journey is led by spiritual director and pilgrimage guide Lacy Clark Ellman and spiritual director and retired faculty member Tom Cashman.

SFD 575B Special Topics

Session 1: Saturday, May 11, 9am-4pm
Session 2: Saturday, June 1, 9am-4pm (we'll be going to Bainbridge Island)
Session 3: Friday, June 21, 1pm-8pm

Pilgrimage has historically been understood as sacred travel that integrates body, mind, soul and spirit. Might pilgrimage also provide a formative model for our everyday lives and the lives of those whom we serve? The practice of pilgrimage invites us as seekers to become agents of change on our journeys of transformation. In this course, students will learn about pilgrimage through study, reflection, practice, and shared experience and develop an understanding of how the archetypes of pilgrimage and the Hero’s Journey can be also applied in everyday life.

TCE 503 Our Religious Impulse: Encountering Religious Otherness in a Multi-faith Context

In this course we will explore the religious impulse. We will look into how religious ideologies fill the void for power, control, security, peace, and give voice to joy and pain. We will create a working definition for faith and be introduced to the process of faith development. Students will become familiar with the primary world religious and how they connect to our Christian narrative. We will also analyze the six basic streams of Christian spirituality. We will wrestle with what it means to be Christian in the world and what is Good News in a pluralistic society.

TCE 520 Philosophy & Theological Thought

This course builds philosophical foundations for graduate students in the interdisciplinary study of theology, philosophy, and culture. The course attends to relationships between philosophy and theology by looking at philosophers who have dealt with the theological tradition of the West and whose influence has affected the subsequent development of theology and of philosophy. While attending to western cultural and historical influences on philosophy that have in turn structured dominant Christian thinking, the course strives to remember that philosophy is a cultural product. Accordingly, this course seeks to understand western philosophy’s influence, its sources, its strengths, and its limitations even as students begin to think globally about Christian thought.

TCE 545 Beauty, Brokenness & The Cross

This class will explore the concept of beauty. This exploration will be shaped by a theology of the cross (which encompasses the whole of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus) that not only leads us to a Christian understanding of beauty but to an understanding that beauty, to be true beauty, must have the power to identify, confront, and redeem that which is most ugly – even death itself. It is in this redemptive motion that we are brought to worship, which emerges from our acknowledgment of God’s redemptive power within our lives.

TCE 550 Engaging Global Partnerships

This cross cultural course is hosted by Kenyan leaders serving in high risk communities in Nairobi that are impacted by poverty, lack of education, homelessness, addiction, and gang violence. Students participate pre-trip readings focused on Kenyan/African theology, history, and culture and a one week cross cultural dialogue in Nairobi. Additionally, students meet with local leaders to discuss street kids and human trafficking, gender violence, and advocacy, gang chaplaincy, education, trauma informed care, and community development.

Fall Courses

BTI 502 Reading Practices: Engaging the Biblical Text

2 credits
This course is an introduction to practices of theological interpretation. Different critical approaches and their historical development, contributions and limitations are discussed. Students gain experience using the biblical story as a norm to reflect on culture and life. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is studied.

CSL 502 History and Therapeutic Perspectives: Contextualizing the Interpersonal

3 credits
This course is designed to give students a historical and theoretical grounding in the major counseling theories and theorists. Current interpersonal theory is placed both historically and theoretically. The student will explore relational dynamic theory from both a psychological and theological vantage point.

CSL 530 Internship I

2 credits
Prerequisites: CSL 502, CSL 503, CSL 528, CSL 551, CSL 552, CSL 553, CSL 542, CSL 544, CSL 545, concurrent with CSL 543 (Recommended: CSL 510, CSL 524)
The purpose of the Counseling Internship is to provide a clinical setting for the intern to gather clinical experience and to receive clinical supervision. During the gatherin of clinical experience, the intern has the opportunity to learn and to grow their "clinical mind." The clinical setting will provide the intern with supervised experiences in preparation for professional practice as a counselor. Supervision will include but not limited to administrative skills (fees, billing, etc.), case management skills (evaluation of lethality, level of care, etc.) and clinical skills (frame/perimeter, setting, transference, countertransference, documentation, assessment, case formulation, etc.). The Intern will have an opportunity to develop and practice these skills in a variety of clinical settings under the guidance of an on-site supervisor. In addition, the student will participate in a supervised Case Conference seminar at The Seattle School.
Please also see the Internship Handbook on the website.

CSL 551 Listening Lab: Part I

2 credits over 2 terms
This introductory practicum provides the foundation for counseling training by means of group interaction with a faculty supervisor. The practicum provides training in listening and feedback skills. It also presents the opportunity for each student to consider personal matters that may impede or enhance their work as a counselor, pastor or ministry leader.

FI Frameworks and Intersections

IDS 501 Intersections: Interdisciplinary Inquiry & Psychological Frameworks

This course will explore interdisciplinary perspectives on complex problems that affect and reveal the human condition, as well as contexts that impact learning, including epistemological frameworks, personal worldviews and hermeneutics, and one’s internal world and development of the mind. Issues pertaining to diversities of one’s locatedness, experience, oppressive systems and institutionalized marginalization, and social fragmentation will all be engaged from an interdisciplinary framework of theology, psychology, and biblical studies.

IDS 504 Critical Reading Lab

Critical Reading Lab is a companion class to the first term Common Curriculum classes. In this course, students explore what it means to know and to learn within the graduate curriculum, particularly as it relates to interdisciplinary and integrative work. Students will explore various ways of knowing as part of a journey of discovery in a smaller group format with other students.

SFD 513B Care of the Soul and Call to Sacred Activism

The question in this course is how the Christ call of self-denial does not become a self-deprecating denial of self. Care of the soul has to do with continually cultivating a richly expressive, imaginative and meaningful life that concerns itself with attending to God's presence in the world. This course invites the student to organize and shape one's soul and life in a way that is inseparable from the world's soul; calling us to work for change in God's world in a manner that allows for sustainability, to "burn and not be consumed (Exodus 3.2)."

TCE 506 Church History I: From Jesus to the Reinassance

This course examines the unfolding narrative of Christianity from its beginnings through the Renaissance, along with the history of Christian mission and the part Christians and Christianity played in the larger social history of each era. It seeks to integrate doctrinal, intellectual, liturgical, and ecclesiastic history with an understanding of how Christians lived their daily lives.

WW Writing Workshop

Note: This is the pre-term Workshop. The Writing Workshop provides a foundational understanding of the writing process and of The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology’s academic writing standards. This seminar-style class is an opportunity to become familiar with different types of writing required at The Seattle School, learn the appropriate use of academic sources, and receive feedback about your writing. In addition, you’ll review the basics of thesis statements, evidence, paper organization, revision, library research, citation style, and sentence style and grammar. Peer review and small- and large-group discussion will be used extensively in this workshop; thus, the Writing Workshop is appropriate both for the novice academic writer as well as the experienced one.

Winter Courses

Spring Courses