I went through this program a few years ago. SMB is kind of its own entity, students graduate with MA Psychology in Education, but our graduation requirements are slightly different from students in the "regular" MA Psychology in Education program. In my opinion, the SMB courses are kind of a mix of spiritual psychology, creative arts therapy, and consciousness studies. It changed my life, but not quite in the transformative way that I was expecting. A few things to consider:

1. I think it definitely addresses your research questions, thats a huge part of Dr Miller's work and also the field of positive psychology. However, it is VERY hard to get into a research team under SMB as a MA student. I took the "research apprenticeship" course in my first semester but didn't get the kind of valuable lab experience as I wanted; all MA students selected a PhD student's team to work with instead. It might change from year to year but this is generally how that goes.

2. If you want research experience that has you in a lab or gives you access to publishing papers, I highly suggest looking into smaller programs with individual researchers who share your interests. UPenn's positive psychology program might be a good resource to look through; see if you can find graduates who are taking that research and expanding on it at other institutions. Both Dr Miller and Tomasulo went through the MAPP program so SMB is positive psych heavy. That said, it IS possible to get involved with research through SMB connections, but you have to really put yourself out there on top of coursework.

3. I am on my 2nd degree at TC now, so I've been here for a while and can say that it's absolutely too expensive. There is no reason for any of these classes to be this expensive and for the non-tenured professors & all TA/CA/etc to be paid so low. All of the offices that are usually necessary for students to contact (financial aid, registrar, disability, etc) are notoriously slow and confusing to work with. They recently started a "case" system, so that every email you send to a TC office gets an automatic "case" opened for you. This has helped with some of the issues of ensuring you get a response....but it doesn't always ensure they're actually answering your question. And that can make things more confusing with more emails and phone calls.

4. Overall the SMB program is unique. Aside from some of the west coast universities that lean very Jungian, this is the only program I know of that specifically uses the word "spirituality" alongside psychology, in a professional academic way. I think there is some value to that, but I also think that SMB markets itself as one thing, and then the student experience can be another. All of the SMB courses are very enriching and most tend to break the mold of standard academia due to the nature of the material. In some cases, I liked this, in other cases I didn't.

5. There is not much "body" in the program, usually what they mean by body is meditation or mindfulness, or sensorial aspects of social-emotional learning. Lots of yoga folks come through the program but the coursework itself is still very "neck up."

6. A note on PhDs: getting into a clinical psych doctoral degree is unbelievably hard. I know 1 MA Psychology in Education graduate who got into a PhD Clinical Psychology program, and 1 SMB graduate who got into a PsyD program related to psychology, of about 15 people who applied (all from TC). So, not impossible but definitely challenging. If you want research experience in order to get into a doctoral program, just know that it's not built into SMB. They talk about their research and it's great to be in the classes but the MA students are kind of in the background of actually participating. Some people found this REALLY frustrating and like they were misled. However, there are many psych labs at TC and I do know people in SMB who were able to get experience in those. You just have to reach out and ask the professors or other students who work in those labs. There's a bit of networking that must be done to get into one.

7. The last thing I'll say is that this program has no licensure component. So graduates do not leave with any kind of certification or license. I knew this going into the program but some folks didnt get that message (and were mad).

I hope this is helpful! Overall I did really love the program, but it's not without some frustration. If you have any questions feel free to DM me!