Independent Student Enrollment

If you’re not enrolled in one of our affiliated schools, but are interested in taking one of our classes you can register here. The Independent Student application fee ($50) is non-refundable. Tuition for the 2023-24 academic year will be $2000 per course, due prior to the beginning of each term. Tuition must be paid in full for students to receive access to the course on Canvas. Students may request a tuition scholarship of up to 50% of tuition at the time of application.

CCS does not participate in the Title IV federal education loan program. Students enrolled at other graduate theological institutions may consult with their home schools about whether it will be possible to use Title IV loans for CCS courses.

Independent Student Handbook

Fall 2024 Courses

CCS 410/510 Trauma-Informed Chaplaincy

Trauma is the emotional response to distressing events; it impacts a person’s executive function and ability to self-regulate. This course introduces key concepts to learners including individual and collective trauma, an overview of the science of trauma, and consideration of the cultural contexts of chaplaincy and trauma. As well, students learn and practice evidence-based spiritual care interventions, develop personal frameworks and habits for a lifetime of work, and identify strategies for implementation in their context.

Instructor: Dr. Kate Lassiter

Dr. Lassiter is the Senior Director of Lifelong Learning and Doctor of Ministry at Meadville Lombard Theological School. Her book Recognizing Other Subjects: Feminist Pastoral Theology and the Challenge of Identity identifies interpersonal, structural, and theological barriers to advancing care and justice and strategies for personal and social transformation. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion, Psychology, and Culture from Vanderbilt University where she was a fellow in the Program for Theology and Practice. She is also a yoga and meditation instructor and an avid outdoorswoman.

CCS 422/522 Grief and Lament   

Grief is one of the most ubiquitous experiences for a spiritual care provider in any context. Situations of death and dying call for a spiritual care provider to employ a cross-section of ministerial roles and functions: individual care, ritual praxis, ethical consultation. In the wider social contexts in which we serve, large-scale losses call for grief care on a communal level: from the increasing precarity of democratic governments and the breakdown of institutions we’ve depended upon, to the collapse of the climate and extinction of species on a mass scale, to the loss of landscapes integral to our sense of self-in-community. The course develops practical theological approaches to grief and loss on scales from the individual, to the communal, to the planetary.

Instructor: Dr. Cody Sanders

Cody J. Sanders is Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, an affiliated faculty member in Pastoral Theology and Chaplaincy Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, and a faculty member at the Center for Chaplaincy Studies. He is a former parish pastor and chaplain serving both Harvard and MIT. He has published a number of books, including, Spiritual Care First-Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community (Fortress, 2025), Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending the Dead (Fortress, 2023), and A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth (Westminster, 2019). Cody is an ordained Baptist minister (Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches).