Lewis & Clark Launches Eco-Soma-Arts Certificate

In the forests surrounding Lewis & Clark’s campus, the ponderosa pine stands tall. Over the span of hundreds of years, the trees reach their full height—withstanding fires, droughts, and peckish creatures along the way.

Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, professor of marriage, couple, and family therapy
Credit: Nina Johnson“Nature models resilience,” says Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, professor of marriage, couple, and family therapy at the Graduate School of Education and Counseling. “And from a mental health perspective, this can invite people into a different mode of thinking—slowing down, observing, and regulating the nervous system by being with and in nature. The things we see, feel, smell, and touch are included in how we make meaning out of our experiences. Here, nature can be the co-therapist.”

In summer 2026, the graduate school will welcome its first cohort of 23 students into the Eco-Soma-Arts certificate program, with Hernandez-Wolfe as director. Available to all students enrolled in an L&C counseling or therapy master’s degree program, the 8-credit certificate is earned over two years, beginning in the second year of a given program.

It has been a “labor of love” to develop, Hernandez-Wolfe explains, building on the work of former instructors like Thomas Doherty and Carol Doyle who brought the field of ecopsychology and ecotherapies to the graduate school. The new certificate integrates four foundational pillars: ecological systems thinking, somatic experience, expressive arts, and situated knowledge. These are core tenets that work together to redefine the therapeutic relationship as one that involves nature.

In clinical practice, ecological systems thinking acknowledges that nature is instrumental in balance, healing, and cooperation. Somatic experience redirects focus to the body and draws connections between our physical and emotional sensations: breathing, movement, and muscular tensions, for instance. The expressive arts address the therapeutic potential of art making, and situated knowledge recognizes the power structures embedded in all modern processes, including our conceptualization of nature and other animal beings.

All four pillars center around working in and with the outdoors. “Lewis & Clark is an amazing place where we can learn with nature on campus. It’s all right here,” says Hernandez-Wolfe. “We are privileged to have so much green here in Portland, as well as people who care about tending to our trees, plants, and animals. There is incredible abundance.”

Shelby Silver-Wilkinson MA ’28One required course in the certificate program is Expressive Arts and Nature, which incorporates drawing, painting, and sculpting into the training of mental health practitioners, exploring the interconnected roles of aesthetics and the senses. Another, Applied Ecopsychology and Deepening Connections with Ancestral Wisdom, enables students to integrate and honor ancestral cultural wisdom while addressing cultural appropriation, relationships with space and sense of place, and “human rewilding.”

Shelby Silver-Wilkinson MA ’28, a first-year student in the graduate school’s art therapy program, plans to begin the Eco-Soma-Arts certificate in summer 2026. “My relationship with nature is invaluable to me,” she says. “Through some of life’s most challenging moments, I find myself drawn to our Earth’s meaningful and abundant healing modalities. In the certificate program, I hope to deepen this symbiotic connection, where as I serve to heal the Earth, the Earth also heals me.”

Eco-Soma-Arts Certificate Counseling, Therapy, and School Psychology Art Therapy