MORE CHINESE TEACHERS
Because we offer our MAcCHM in both English and Chinese languages, we employ more Chinese faculty, most of whom teach in both programs. As the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences, we place special emphasis on learning where this medicine comes from, honoring its ancient roots and the culture it comes from.
AFFORDABLE & ACCESSIBLE
Since our founding, our mission has been to provide affordable education that is accessible to our local community. Our school remains focused on preparing practitioners who are committed to serving our local community and populations who need our medicine most.
This means being the most affordable program, accepting VA/Veteran’s financial aid, offering a Black Lives Matter scholarship for local activists, providing tutoring services for students without strong academic backgrounds, accommodations for students with disabilities, preparing our students for licensing exams and their future careers, and providing alumni services geared towards helping our graduates achieve stable careers.
We guide our students through the admissions process, offer academic advisors throughout the program, and make tutoring and study groups available to every student at no cost. We also provide accommodations for students with disabilities to ensure that everyone can participate in our program. We offer wellness and mental health referrals, housing and food insecurity resources, career services, and more.
COMMUNITY
As one of the oldest schools for TCM, we believe our approach towards education best suits individuals who are looking for more than just a degree and license, but a life long practice. We offer much more than courses and grades. We offer the promise of evolution, community, and balance.
Full time students progress through the program together, taking the same classes each term. They study together for four years and form lasting friendships and connections, often going into practice together upon graduation. Student clubs, student council, and campus events help further this sense of community.
At ACCHS, it is our mission to create a supportive, rewarding, and close-knit community environment where students grow into their capacity as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine. If you’re looking for a program steeped in Chinese culture with amazing teachers and a nurturing community, then ACCHS is your school.
DISTANCE LEARNING
Because of our focus in Classical Chinese Medicine and working from the roots of this medicine, we are offering in-person learning for all hands on classes in the MAcCHM. We believe that this is the best way for you to gain a deeper understanding of this medicine and its lineage.
Basic Science Co-Requisites will continue to offered via distance learning until further notice.
The primary goal of most Chinese Medical physicians is to address the root and branches of a patient’s condition, with the intention of helping to facilitate a positive health outcome. In working towards this goal, the study and practice of Chinese Medicine can take on many forms and be guided by diverse philosophies. Two such philosophies are the ideal of the technical expert, who strives towards skillful application of useful protocols, and that of the scholar physician, guided by clinical reasoning based on principles.
By learning protocols, a clinician learns to apply useful treatments to general conditions. Over time most clinicians will have compiled a mental “cheat-sheet” of a number of protocols that they find to be most effective and reliable, and these serve as important tools in their clinical arsenal. By focusing on the application of principles, a Chinese Medicine practitioner learns how to think. They will thus be able to respond to the specific circumstances of each clinical encounter with intelligence and creativity. In this way, medical practice is spontaneous and insightful, and every clinical outcome serves to refine one’s understanding of the application of those theoretical principles.
These principles, or “rules” of Chinese Medicine, that have guided its thought and practice for roughly 2,000 years, were laid out in the Classical texts of the Han Dynasty. These rules are not simply statements to be memorized, but rather inform a worldview that allows us to frame health and disease in a unique and imminently useful way. Furthermore, learning the rules of the system will often allow a practitioner to deduce why or when an empirical approach or protocol is indicated, and so techniques that are generally useful can be employed more deliberately and with greater specificity.