“If you talk of 50 years of working life… you have to reinvent yourself. You have to make something different out of yourself, rather than just find a new supply of energy.” – Peter Drucker
Program Options
The SOAR Program will be offered Fall 2024 with the on-campus experience September 20-22, 2024, combined with online sessions before and after the intensive workshops. You will be energized for an exciting 2025. Please inquire with questions at soar@cgu.edu
Live, Learn, and Create Like Peter Drucker
In 1971, after spending 28 years in American academia, Peter Drucker came to Claremont Graduate University. By this time, Drucker had already led several different lives: first fleeing the Nazis in Germany due to his critical journalism, then working in London as a bank economist, and finally residing in New York and Vermont where he held professorships in philosophy, politics, and management. Despite his numerous accomplishments, it was only after arriving at CGU that he embarked on his most productive phase. It was during this period that he produced the majority of his prolific writing and founded the school that now bears his name.
What Drucker discovered at CGU — the freedom to explore both new and established interests and the opportunity to develop ideas that would revolutionize business and society in the 21st Century — is what SOAR now offers to successful people seeking their next journey. With a foundation firmly rooted in both the liberal arts and business, CGU and the Drucker School of Management offer SOAR fellows the chance to embark on a new chapter of their lives, emphasizing personal development, societal impact, and transformative education. If you, like Peter Drucker, envision the most productive years of your life still ahead, SOAR can help you connect with your purpose and start afresh.
What Comes After Success?
With significant emphasis on “making it” in their career, many accomplished people experience a sense of loss following their achievements, accompanied by a lack of direction in navigating their future. Through SOAR, you will discover new pathways to meaning, community, and purpose within the unique learning environment of Claremont Graduate University, an institution focused solely on graduate-level education:
Personal development + education + community of learners = the path to reinvention
At Claremont Graduate University, we firmly believe in the power of thoughtful transition. When your career trajectory shifts or comes to an end, and you’re seeking a new journey to embark on, it’s time to join the path to personal revitalization. SOAR provides fellows with the opportunity to Seek, Observe, Act, and Renew, empowering them to make creative decisions about the next steps in their lives.
Together with your SOAR peers, you will experience the energizing effects of interpersonal exchanges. With a built-in community of individuals, you’ll feel the camaraderie that comes from exploring new interests and learning from world class professors and lecturers in a safe environment to think, consider, be vulnerable, and feel supported.
The Curriculum
The SOAR curriculum has been created by expert professors in the Drucker School of Management, the School of Arts and Humanities, and the School of Social Science to meet the needs of successful people transitioning in their careers. SOAR offers thoughtful perspectives across a variety of disciplines, with curriculum built around reflection, life design, self-development, and purpose.
- Museum of Me explores how museums tell stories as an entry point to tell your own story. You will reflect on your own personal narrative and then, like a curator, tell that story through objects in a way that considers how the audience will interpret you. We will ask you to delve into what stories you have told in the past, what you believe, what you have accomplished, what story you want to tell now, and what story you might want to tell in the future.
- Great Questions uses books, texts, and poems to engage with some of the timeless questions that shape the human journey: What is truth? How do you know it? What is forgiveness? What is loss? What is joy? What is wonder? What does it mean to be a person? What is a life well-lived?
- Transitions uncovers the predictable emotions and challenges of change. You will consider your own relationship with change and learn the tools and mindsets to navigate any transition with awareness, patience, positivity, and intention. This course helps you to integrate your life up until this point and prepare to move forward into your next phase.
- Purpose and Impact helps you cultivate your own sense of purpose — finding the intersection between what you care about, what you are good at, and what the world needs – and ultimately define what you want your next contribution to be.
- Design Your Life brings you into the present moment to create awareness of what drives you and what gives you energy. With this foundation, you will apply design thinking tools and approaches as you generate and experiment with different ideas for what you want to grow into next.
For a SOAR podcast and video, see Reinventing Yourself In Retirement With Steve Tarr (please note the dates, below, have been updated)
Societal Impact
The SOAR program enables people to connect themselves and their journey to the complex challenges facing our world. Participants will engage in activities that allow them to explore their passions, learn about critical challenges facing the world, have an immediate impact, and begin to craft what they want to do next. Our collective interest in Societal Impact will be supported by the SOAR curriculum as well as speakers and general networking opportunities.
Time Commitment
The SOAR Program is three sessions covering all described material. Online meetings are held before and after the core three-day session is held at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. The annual sequence is Course 1 in Fall, Course 2 in Spring, and Course 3, a capstone experience, occurring annually. There is excellent value in each Course independently and the highest value in the entire three session program.
SOAR Course 1 will be offered Fall 2024 with the on-campus experience September 20-22 2024, combined with online sessions before and after the intensive workshops. Please inquire for more details.
Program Fee
On or before June 15, 2024, the early bird fee is $3995. After June 16, the fee is $4995. Sign up immediately using the Registration link. A $500 referral credit to you is available by referring another person who applies, is accepted, and completes the Course. An additional $500 per Course discount is available for participants who commit to all three Courses in advance.
Participants are responsible for their own travel and hotel arrangements for the on-campus events.
Please inquire for more details by completing the form at the bottom of this page.
Faculty
Lori Anne Ferrell
Dean, School of Arts & Humanities
Director, Early Modern Studies Program
Director, Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards
Joshua Goode
Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History
Chair, Cultural Studies (Fall 2022)
Jeremy Hunter
Associate Professor of Practice
Founding Director, Executive Mind Leadership Institute