Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is interfaith professional education for ministry. It brings you into supervised encounters with people in crisis. Through intense involvement with people in need of spiritual care, and the feedback you receive from peers and teachers, you develop new awareness of yourself as a person, your abilities as a caregiver, and the needs of those whom you serve. Through reflection on specific human situations, you learn to utilize your faith tradition as a lens that informs your understanding of spiritual care. Within the interdisciplinary team process of helping people, you develop skills in inter-personal and inter-professional relationships.

Our CPE program benefits from the expertise of health care professionals, such as ACPE supervisor, supervisors in supervisory education and other professionals in Spiritual Care Services, who are engaged in a number of teaching responsibilities. CPE students regularly participate in educational workshops, didactic sessions with guest speakers and quarterly retreats.

St. Mary's Bay Area CPE program is targeted to people preparing to enter professional hospital chaplaincy, seminary students, laypeople and others in graduate programs and denominations who are taking CPE to fulfill requirements. Students can participate either as interns (for a single unit) or residents (for four consecutive units).

St. Mary's Bay Area CPE program strives to maintain a diverse faculty and student population, including women and men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds and faith traditions.  The CPE Center is committed to providing equal opportunity in the admissions process, without discrimination based on age, gender, race, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or veteran's status.

For information about the application process, please click here