A master's program that you design yourself!

The Master of Arts in Human Development was established by Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in 1972 and is the oldest program of its kind in Minnesota. It is an interdisciplinary graduate program that allows students to combine academic interests, life experience and career goals. Students in the human development program have secured major grants, published both creative and scholarly works, produced commissioned works of art, and received public recognition for their accomplishments.

The human development program's wholly unique combination of scholarship, mentoring, and program flexibility allows individuals to custom design programs that lead to personal and professional enhancement. The program is designed to meet the individualized needs of adult learners. Each student works with a permanently-assigned adviser in the development and evaluation of his or her overall graduate program. The adviser and the program staff work to facilitate the student's learning throughout the program.

Possible fields of study include, but are not limited to, concentrations in adult education, social justice, career counseling, employee assistance counseling, transformational leadership, organizational and individual coaching, writing, urban studies, holistic health/wellness, spiritual studies, music therapy, and ecological studies. Any two or more of these fields may be combined into one 32-credit Human Development program.

The Saint Mary's University Master of Arts in Human Development program provides learners with a vehicle that supports the development of an integrated philosophy of life as well as with means to reach that integration.

The program encourages the integration of personal and professional experience into the structure of graduate work. Ethics, the hallmark of the graduate curriculum at Saint Mary's University, is translated into the human development program as social responsibility. The ethic of social responsibility invites the student to move beyond enlightened self-interest to make a commitment to a greater connectedness and sharing of talents with the community at large. Moreover, values including integrity, social responsibility, honesty, sensitivity, and wonder are viewed as essential to intellectual, emotional, ethical, interpersonal, creative, and spiritual development, which is human development.

The program is designed to develop competence in understanding one's own experience and growth as well as that of others. Saint Mary's University encourages in-depth explorations of basic human concerns and the application of that knowledge to social problems as a direct demonstration of the ethics of social responsibility. The structure of the program is based on the premise that much growth occurs in the context of self-directed learning and that rigorous, scholarly study can and must be balanced with experience and a deeper confrontation with theory in terms of personal meaning.

Graduates of the Master of Arts in Human Development program are expected to be able to do the following:

1. Communicate effectively in a variety of modes.
2. Promote the common good through a commitment to social responsibility and ethical practices.
3. Evaluate the efficacy of diverse perspectives, contexts and ways of knowing.
4. Apply knowledge, understanding of principles, theories and concepts to situations.
5. Demonstrate the ability to continue learning through self-directed, integrated, interdisciplinary scholarship.
6. Create an original contribution to the student’s field.