Graduate Fields of Study

Naropa University faculty, under the direction of the vice president for academic affairs, has established requirements and criteria for graduation with the degree of Master of Arts, Master of Divinity or Master of Fine Arts. These include both the breadth and depth of study traditionally associated with the liberal arts tradition in higher education. In addition, the university's contemplative arts requirements effectively unite classroom learning with personal awareness disciplines.

The Department of Contemplative Education was founded on a nonsectarian, yet distinctly Shambhala Buddhist, approach to teacher education. In addition to the low-residency master's degree program, it also offers an Alternative Teacher Licensure Program for aspiring teachers to earn their initial teaching license. Non-program and professional enrichment students are also welcome to take almost any course in the program.

The newly designed Environmental Leadership program prepares the next generation of thinkers and practitioners to lead organizational and community transformation toward the creation of an environmentally just and sustainable society. Naropa’s Environmental Studies Department has been training effective leaders at the master’s level since 1995.

The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is comprised of the Summer Writing Program and the Department of Writing & Poetics, which includes the MFA in Writing and Poetics, and the MFA in Creative Writing, our low-residency degree program.

Naropa University’s Graduate School of Psychology houses three vibrant departments offering academically rigorous and personally transformative programs at the cutting edge of psychology. Curricula are rooted in experientially based embodied ways of knowing including empathetically based critical thinking, community practices, and inclusive and pluralistic values. From this ground of experience, students naturally discover their personal expression of responsible service in the world.

Master's programs offered through the Department of Religious Studies are approached within the context of the individual, how religion operates in culture and how religion addresses questions of life's ultimate values. The methods utilized in the programs are drawn from the academic discipline of history of religions and from a commitment to presenting traditions from perspectives sympathetic to the living religious communities themselves.

Two distinct Graduate Theater programs are offered: the Contemporary Performance program
in Boulder and, in cooperation with the London International School of the Performing Arts, the Lecoq Based Actor Created Theater program in London.