Research at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute

To view a brief video introduction to research at SBGI by Dr. Jill Allison Kern, Director of Research, click on her photo >

Our mission at SBGI is to train graduate students to become world-class scholar-practitioners.

Our students not only acquire the skills to become gifted clinicians who work with clients in therapeutic contexts but also learn how to make important intellectual contributions to the emerging fields of pre-and-perinatal and somatic psychology.

At SBGI, students learn how to pose researchable questions, think critically about knowledge claims, use traditional and cutting-edge methodologies, and communicate their learning to the community of scholars through well-crafted research papers and persuasive professional presentations.

Our students acquire a solid foundation in quantitative methodologies designed for hypothesis testing and qualitative methods that seek to explore people’s inner experiences and subjective meanings.

Research is integrated throughout the curriculum. Students read research articles in nearly every course and learn research skills in a series of classes designed to help them gain mastery of the philosophy and conduct of science.  In addition, they acquire the tools of scholarship by working one-on-one with pioneering research faculty from throughout the US during the master’s project and the culminating experience of the dissertation.

At SBGI we do not view research as a dispassionate activity. Rather, we encourage students to conduct studies that reflect their deepest curiosity, values, and life purpose. 

Questions our pre-and-perinatal students are investigating include: What are pregnant women’s expectations of childbirth as they near their first delivery and are their expectations realized? Is there a relationship between neo-natal intensive care nurses’ own birth experiences and their beliefs about the consciousness of the infants they treat? What is the experience of donating breast milk to a milk bank following the death of one’s infant?

Our somatic psychology students are studying topics such as the role of body awareness in couples’ emotional communication, the degree to which neurofeedback can improve a golfer’s performance, and adolescent girls’ erotic voice and sexual agency.

I invite you to join Santa Barbara Graduate Institute’s vibrant scholarly community and hope you will contact me, Jill Allison Kern, PhD, Director of Research, if you would like to learn more about research at SBGI.