Preface

The Fielding Graduate Institute was founded (as The Fielding Institute) in 1974 to address a largely unmet need in U.S. higher education at the time: to serve mid-career, adult professionals in pursuit of a doctoral degree. Such students often cannot reconcile their obligations to family, job, community, etc. - and the geographic location to which they are thereby bound - with the demands of a „typical“ higher education setting of having to travel to a campus and be in a classroom most of the days of the week at preset times, nor do they learn well in such a setting. The learning environment of an instructor as a „professing“ figure of authority who lectures to his/her students, usually at least a generation younger, simply does not work well for many students who have gained significant life and professional experiences, and whose average age (at Fielding) is in the mid-forties.

Today, Fielding has nearly 1500 students, 150 faculty members, and 100 staff members, and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Fielding‘s largest academic programs are in Clinical Psychology, Human & Organization Development, Educational Leadership and Change (all leading to doctoral degrees), and Organizational Management/Organization Development (Master's Degrees and Graduate Certificates). The mode of interaction between faculty and students has been termed „distributed education“: they come together in regional cluster groups approx. once a month, meet in larger national Sessions of several hundred attendees several times a year, and interact in an online learning environment („FELIX“ = Fielding Education Link and Information eXchange). The balance of these different interactions varies between the academic programs: the Clinical Psychology program (the only one of this type accredited by the American Psychological Association) has the highest „face-to-face“ component, while the Organizational Management/Organization Development programs are conducted almost exclusively online.

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