Advanced Certificate in Spiritual Direction

This program is offered online or on campus.


The advanced certificate in spiritual direction program is designed to identify the participant's potential for becoming a spiritual director, to assist the participant in discerning a call to this ministry, to formulate a model of spiritual direction and chaplaincy, and to develop the specific skills required to serve as a spiritual director. Graduates of the program serve as high school and college campus ministers, retreat directors, and spiritual directors.

Program Highlights

  • Learn with our renowned faculty and international students from more than twenty countries.
  • Training features both cognitive and applied learning, and includes resource gathering, modeling, discerning, practicing, demonstrating, case preparation, mentoring, reflecting, researching, writing, and supervised fieldwork.

Program Basics

  • The curriculum requires satisfactory completion of 6 courses (18 semester credits).
  • All courses can be completed online, on campus, and hybrid.

Careers

  • Spiritual director or companion
  • Retreat Direction
  • Pastoral ministry
  • Chaplaincy
  • Prison Ministry
  • Campus ministry
  • Gainful Employment Disclosure
  • See our gainful employment disclosure page.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Students will demonstrate facilities with methods of research in specific theological disciplines for post-graduate and doctoral studies.
  2. Students will communicate the Christian story competently to make it accessible through a variety of means (e.g. teaching, writing, dialogue, personal consultation).
  3. Students will articulate the relationship between the Christian tradition and their professional practice and spiritual development.
  4. Students will articulate a well rounded knowledge and critical appropriation of Jesuit Spirituality and the Catholic intellectual tradition.
  5. Students will use tools of literary, cultural, historical, and social analysis in the interpretation of various cultures and their relationship to the Christian tradition.