Colleagues often ask me what’s so special about low-residency programs. They are curious as to whether all the hype isn’t simply just another online modality? The answer from me is emphatically, No! Well-designed low-residency programs offer the best of both worlds, the flexibility of geographically dispersed, technologically enabled learning with the intensity of onsite and in-person connection. And, in Antioch’s case, they also provide a modality that expands access to and the impact of our mission for a most just and inclusive society.
We’re not new to low-residency models. Antioch University has been offering nationally recognized low-residency, high-impact master’s and doctoral programs for nearly three decades! Combining flexible learning modalities with purposeful mission-driven curriculum means that we educate students to transform their professions and communities wherever there live and work, be that across the country and world.
I have been fortunate enough to have had significant roles with Antioch’s two original low-residency programs, starting with the MFA in Creative Writing back in 1997, when, as the campus academic dean, I was able to support the creative vision of the faculty to bring our first low-residency program to life, and then, beginning in 1999, I took on the amazing opportunity as the founding director of our highly successful PhD in Leadership & Change. Both programs set the stage for Antioch’s belief in and expertise with low-residency models. Today, Antioch University offers six low-residency doctoral programs, 13 master’s level programs, and nine specialized professional certificates. We clearly believe in this model.
(Cover photo: a graduating class of the PhD in Leadership & Change.)
Not One-Size Fits All
To say “low residency” is far from a one-size-fits all modality. Some Antioch low-residency programs meet for monthly residencies, others quarterly, still other bi-annually. The length of residencies also varies. Some hold three-day convenings, others are five day and still others meet for ten days. Some hold virtual residencies while others meet face-to-face at one or another of our campuses across the country. Still others offer their residencies in synchronous hybrid formats.
There is also variety in how students interact, form and sustain learning communities. Some are designed around annual cohorts, others organized around genre affinity groups, and still others have students enrolled in sequenced courses and practica. Depending on degree level, the demonstration of learning might be specifically aligned with a course-based final exam, while in other cases, the demonstrations are competency-based capstone projects and papers. The culmination of learning might be embedded in research, experiential activities and professional practice, or more traditional classroom and cohort-based discussion.
Higher education is slow to innovate. We know that experimentation is both much needed and somewhat frowned upon. When we founded the PhD in Leadership and Change, many people—including our accreditors—doubted we could teach doctoral-level research methods in a low-residency, competency-based model, without courses, without grades. They gave Antioch a three-year window to prove ourselves. When they returned three years later, they were so blown away by how well it worked that they actually invited me to present at future conferences on high-quality experimental doctoral education. How proud we were of what Antioch had done.
It’s About the People Not the Technology
Antioch’s low-residency programs are highly relational endeavors, with intense student and faculty engagement in spite of the distance—or perhaps—as a result of it. There is no question that the best student learning across the board happens where there is intense student-to-faculty and student-to-student engagement. In this regard, geographically dispersed programs require intentionality in the design and delivery of teaching and learning in order for them to be more than simply a flexible option for degree attainment.
The relational learning exemplified by many of Antioch’s low-residency programs has a powerful impact on student success and often leads to very high student satisfaction, graduation rates and yes, alumni giving. In fact, as but one example, the PhD in Leadership & Change has an 80% graduation rate. Compare that to the national average of doctoral completion rates at @ 57%, and you can see how effective this modality can be. And, of course, the national rates include mostly traditionally designed, on-site, classroom-based programs, many of which are offered at institutions with far deeper pockets than Antioch.
With our low-residency programs, Antioch faculty, staff and students can live and work anywhere, traveling in for residencies and engaging intensely with each other virtually between residencies (decades before the pandemic!). Early on, of course, the engagement was by email and phone. Then came other tools and finally, Zoom. Just goes to show, it isn’t the technology that is the star element, it is the people!
Low Residency and High Quality
Whatever the degree level and discipline, the frequency of convenings or the nature of the demonstrations of learning, Antioch’s low-residency programs excel both in mission and modality. This has led to recognition by peers, accreditors and the media as being leaders in the field. For example, Antioch’s MFA in Creative Writing, now in its 28th year, has been recognized time and again as one of the nation’s top creative writing low-residency programs. It has been singled out for delivering not just excellent literary education but also mission-driven education. The program describes itself as being “devoted not only to the education of literary and dramatic artists but to community engagement and the pursuit of social justice.”
Similarly, the PhD in Leadership & Change has also been recognized by external reviewers even decades back as “an exemplar for Antioch and the rest of higher education.” Its cross-sector, cohort-based and competency-designed doctoral program educates mid-to-senior-level professionals to engage in research, scholarship and practice that informs how leaders build and sustain more just and inclusive organizations and communities.
The low-residency MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling offered by our Seattle campus has been recognized as among the most affordable substance abuse counseling degrees in the United States.
Modality and Mission
And that leads to an essential point. Antioch’s mission “to empower students with the knowledge and skills to lead meaningful lives and to further social, racial, economic, and environmental justice” is embedded in every Antioch program regardless of modality. The MFA prepares students for careers and meaningful lives as writers, editors, teachers—and as engaged literary citizens. The PhD in Leadership & Change educates scholar-practitioners to research with radical curiosity and to lead with democratic inspiration. Our many low-residency psychology and counseling programs strive to train practitioners with the knowledge and skills to excel in their chosen professions—so they can work toward the mental health of individuals and the wellbeing of communities.
Our approach to educating for both jobs and justice holds steady across degree levels. For me, what is so powerful about the low-residency modality is that it strengthens and expands the impact of Antioch’s powerful mission in a number of ways.
Expanding Access
That students in low-residency programs come from an almost limitless geographic expanse, in many cases, from across the country and internationally, means the model increases access to an Antioch mission-driven program no matter where a student lives and works. That in turn means a wider diversity of learners with cohorts composed of passionate professionals from different cities and states, be those red, blue or purple, and from different nationalities and countries, bringing global perspectives to research, practice and collective learning. While others are closing borders and building walls, the low-residency model crosses borders and take education out of a tower (the Ivory Tower that is).
Expanding Impact
Another very direct way in which low-residency programs expand Antioch’s mission further, farther and wider is that our students engage in their required experiential learning components, be those traineeships in local clinics or real-world change projects with organizations and communities, in their very own locations and regions. And, as Antioch low-residency alumni, they are educators, writers, therapists, leaders, activists and advocates in communities around the globe. Low residency makes for high impact. Antiochians are everywhere!
The advantage of reaching students already embedded in their diverse communities sometimes underpins the institutional decision to redesign a fully on-site program into a low-residency version. For example, in 2022 the PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision, located on our Seattle campus embraced a low-residency model that made it possible for many more students—including those living out of state—to enroll in the program without moving. And that, in turn, has not only increased enrollments but allowed students to complete their internships in their own communities—especially ones located far from big universities.
Expanding Work-Life and Study-Life Integration
There’s another aspect to highlight in terms of how the low-residency modality strengthens mission and academic quality in extraordinary ways. Three of Antioch’s campuses are located in cities ranked among the nation’s most expensive: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Seattle. It would be virtually impossible for faculty and staff (as well as students) to be able to afford to move their families and build their Antioch professional lives on our modest salaries. On the faculty side, this modality has enabled Antioch to competitively attract talented and committed faculty and staff not because of salaries or prestige but because of innovative mission-driven programs and work-life considerations available in low-residency programs.
I think words matter. So, I’m not going to declare that low-residency programs are the higher education modality for the 21st century. That’s both too limited and too narrow a view. Antioch has been offering low-residency degrees for close to 30 years. We know it isn’t right for every learner. Nor for every educator. Nor for every university. But, as an institution that has pioneered the model, we know what we are doing. What makes our offerings so powerful and purposeful is not the modality in isolation, but the ways that our mission enriches and is enriched by that modality.
For me, the key is to think about the essential synergy: low residency and high impact. The goal always is for Antioch to deliver its mission, everywhere in every way.
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