New Earth Institute (NEI)
The New Earth Institute is the branch of Southwestern College that oversees all programs, products, and services that are not part of the formal master’s degree programs. NEI offers seven professional certificate programs and the annual Transformation & Healing Conference. NEI also sponsors a lecture series and other continuing education opportunities for both students and community members.
The New Earth Institute of Southwestern College offers cutting edge experiential and transformational programs on innovative and clinically relevant topics. Each program offers distinctive training that can enhance not only the participant’s experience and skill base, but their career opportunities. Classes can be taken for Board approved CEs by counselors, social workers and art therapists, as well as for personal enrichment by the general public. You may want to complete a certificate in a specialty area or you may choose to take whichever class is of interest to you.
*Southwestern College students may take these courses at the Continuing Education price unless they are using the course to meet graduate program degree requirements.
Here's AAR Certificate Director Richard Pelfrey in conversation with Graduate Assistant Toni Black.
We gathered with Richard Pelfrey to learn more details about the Addictions, Abuse and Recovery Certificate and got the low down on just how useful the certificate was for recent SWC graduate Mattsué Cahue-Lopez in her Field Training experience.
Richard G. Pelfrey, MS, LMHC, LADAC, NCAC
Teaching Philosophy
I’ve written several treatment philosophies over the course of my career but this is my first philosophy of teaching. My philosophy is rooted in the lessons of my first teacher and mentor in the work of addiction treatment, who stressed the importance of being in the world but not of it. I find it essential and valuable to learn and understand the system in which we work as addiction professionals, while also bringing in the important wisdom existing outside of the matrix of the institution of treatment.
I value the power of learning in the context of relationship, as a community or wisdom circle with an “elder” - the instructor - providing lessons, guiding the direction of the learning, and creating a safe judgment-free container for active participation by the class. The class invests and engages by receiving and moving the learning within the container of the classroom through participation, questions, and critical reflection. In this way, the class becomes a ceremony in which all have the opportunity to grow together. I’m also interested in the power of a learning community to apply knowledge rather than merely receive it. I believe this creates an invitation for the requisite knowledge provided in a course to be internalized. I achieve this by engaging the community in application of assessment and treatment knowledge to true-to-life scenarios in the field of treatment. This is the way I’ve learned to teach in the group and retreat setting, and I’ve seen it translate seamlessly to Academia in my tenure as guest lecturer at Lesley University’s addiction diagnostics class. My focus in the treatment of addictions has been for over a decade on the wound underlying addictive behavior and the healing of that wound. Within this healing container I find it imperative to welcome the sacred into the treatment space. In my philosophy of teaching addictions treatment, I also find value in stressing the importance of this facet and creating dialogue around the how and why of the wound and the healing.
You can reach Richard by email at pelfrey.richard@gmail.com.