Dear Pacifica Community,
Welcome to the 2025-2026 academic year. Whether you are a returning or new student, a long-time employee or a recent hire, we are grateful for your presence and the collective contributions, perspectives, and stories we each carry that make this Pacifica experience what it is. I am excited for what this year will bring and eager for the opportunities to come together in shared purpose.
A new academic year offers us a moment of renewal—an opportunity to set intentions, deepen our commitments, and explore the questions that matter most. Graduate education at Pacifica is not only about acquiring knowledge, but also about cultivating wisdom, resilience, and the ability to contribute meaningfully to our fields and communities.
The present moment and tensions of our time make this work all the more important but also more challenging. As we welcome new community members and continue work aligned with our individual paths and our shared mission, let us continue to ensure Pacifica provides the space where we engage compassionately, respectfully, and intellectually with all, particularly those with different perspectives. Let us be the place where artists, seekers, educators, healers, and visionaries come together, driven and called to serve and to act courageously and supportively. It is where we humbly learn and grow alongside one another, and where we are guided into deeper connection with our own psyches, our communities, and the world.
May we always live our motto to tend soul in and of world and embody our core values of: Logos, Eros, Consciousness, Integrity, Service, and Stewardship.
With a commitment to ongoing communication about happenings at Pacifica, here are a few notes and updates as we get into the fall quarter.
The Year Ahead
2025-2026 is already off to an exciting beginning with the start of many tracks, including Pacifica’s first fully online program, the M.A./Ph.D. in Psychology, Religion, and Consciousness (PRC). This comes after our first fully online track started last spring in the Jungian & Archetypal Studies specialization. The new PRC program—in both content and delivery—emphasizes our continued commitment to rich, relevant scholarship and delivery methods that expand opportunities to learners, while still valuing the on-campus experience.
2026 is a significant one in Pacifica’s history—our 50th anniversary as an educational institution. Plans are underway for how we will honor this golden anniversary as a community, with more information and opportunities to both provide input and participate to come this fall in advance of the new calendar year.
This coincides with our campus consolidation work and how the Lambert Campus will be honored before we transition and unify under one campus at Ladera during the 2026-2027 academic year. Recent updates have been sent out on the campus consolidation work and progress, which can be found on the campus transition webpage. Please continue to look for communications on the campus efforts.
These are meaningful milestones and events in the legacy of Pacifica, which are being handled with thoughtful planning, community-wide involvement, and rituals of celebration and connection.
Engagements
There are several engagements that help kick off this new academic year, perhaps most notably the orientations that programs hold. It’s been great to attend those that have taken place already, and I look forward to more as we support students in beginning a new year, both with logistics, academic resources, and the cultural and ritual elements of each program and their faculty.
Earlier this quarter, I met with faculty, both in-person and virtually, to discuss the latest on institutional direction, faculty development, and best practices to continue the quality teaching and learning that takes place in classrooms and virtual spaces. I also plan to schedule another student forum mid-fall once all tracks have started the quarters and held residential sessions, so we can connect on the latest student support needs and institutional developments.
Our Student Advocacy Group continues to meet and has been engaging in valuable discussions around the student experience. To best support the ongoing work of this group, we need to ensure representation from each program. For those cohorts who have elected representatives, that rep can serve on the Student Advocacy Group. We are looking for representatives from the DPT, PRC, DCH, and CLIE programs. If interested, please email the Office of the Provost officeoftheprovost@pacifica.edu.
In November, members of our leadership team, along with staff and faculty representatives, will engage with the Board of Trustees at their annual retreat. We are working together in advance of that meeting to review progress on our strategic plan from this past academic year and configure our strategic priorities for the year ahead. While there are no student presentations at the Board retreats, we did have students from the Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices specialization present at the Board’s August meeting, now completing the rotation of student reps from all programs having now presented at Board meetings over the last two years.
Finally, a reminder that, along with his family, we will be honoring the life of Dr. Lionel Corbett, a long-time and beloved Pacifica faculty who passed away this summer, with a memorial on campus later in October. Dr. Corbett’s legacy carries on with the numerous people he mentored and moved, through his wisdom, scholarship, and wit. His presence and contributions mean so much to Pacifica, and I leave you with his words to help remind us why we’re here as we move through this year ahead and beyond:
“As long as we keep the light alive, then those that are drawn to it (Pacifica)— if you’re drawn to this—it’s part of your destiny. I believe that the individual really does have a destiny that’s part of one’s vocation.” – Dr. Lionel Corbett
Sincerely,
Dr. Colin Marlaire
Interim President & CEO, Provost
Pacifica Graduate Institute
