By Matthew Bennett, Psy.D.

A feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and — together with fear — the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead. —Camus, in The Plague (on quarantine)

We have been here before.

I’m going to eschew the contemporary technical terms: epidemic, pandemic, disease vectors.  “Plague” will do nicely.  We’ve only known what a pandemic is for a few decades, but we’ve known about plagues for many thousands of years.

by Angela Borda

Some places you have to experience first-hand to understand just how special they are. The first thing you will notice about Pacifica is the beauty of our campuses: richly green, peaceful, a bounty of organic fruit trees, flowers, and the Santa Ynez Mountains rising above us. The campus at Lambert Road is a restored 1920’s-era estate, and higher up toward the mountains is the beautiful retreat of the Ladera Lane campus. One of these campuses will be the setting for your Pacifica Experience Day.

An Interview of Pacifica President Joseph Cambray

by Angela Borda

Angela Borda: We are fortunate to have Dr. Peter Rojcewicz as our new provost, a post which you previously held in conjunction with the post of president. Please describe why Peter was your choice for provost. How is his background in psychology, administration, and poetry a good fit for Pacifica?

Dr. Joseph Cambray: While I made the final choice among the candidates for the position, I would extend this to say that Peter was Pacifica’s choice. We began with an extensive national search with two rounds of committees. The first one vetted the qualified applications and then the second, a selection committee developed criteria and choose the top two candidates to bring to Pacifica. We held a day and a half set of interviews with each of the candidates, in which we introduced them to the president’s council then the IMC. They each gave a presentation open to the entire community, town hall fashion, relating their vision and style of leadership as they would imagine it for Pacifica. 

Montecito Journal's Steve Liebowitz's article on Pacifica alum Cheri Steinkellner and her new play, "Prima Materia." Cheri is a graduate of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life M.A. program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. 

For the full schedule, visit cominghometopacifica.com.

An interview by Angela Borda of Mary A. Wood & Susan Rowland, Pt. III of III

An interview by Angela Borda of Mary A. Wood & Susan Rowland, Pt. II of III

An Interview by Angela Borda of Mary A. Wood & Susan Rowland, Part I of III

An Interview of Juliet Rohde-Brown, Ph.D., by Angela Borda: Part III of III

What do you most enjoy about teaching at Pacifica?

Juliet: The active engagement of the students who come here. They truly care and they are really interested. It created this reciprocal loop of learning that’s not passive. So I enjoy the level of depth that people come in with already, so we’re jumping off from a different point than you might find at other places where people just want a surface experience that will get them a job. We have people who are clinical supervisors, people who are very experience in clinical settings but they come to broaden their capacity to articulate what they already have a sense of knowing. It’s not exclusive to Pacifica, but we have people here who are making quite a difference in the world.

An Interview of Juliet Rohde-Brown, Ph.D., by Angela Borda: Part II of III