From a single course to a university.
Tshikovi University of Botanical & Healing Arts opened in 2017 with one class in African herbalism. Demand for advanced study followed almost immediately. That course became four, and those four became the curriculum taught today.
Why a TUBHA Education Has No Equivalent
The botanical knowledge taught here was carried through families, through migration, through enslavement, and through generations of practitioners who were never admitted to a classroom in which to record it. Much of it was dismissed as folk practice, or absorbed into other systems without attribution. This university exists so that it is taught deliberately, in full, and with its history intact.
Tradition alone, however, is not an education. A student here studies plant identification and materia medica alongside physiology, phytochemistry, herbal energetics, clinical intake and assessment, client documentation, and the boundaries of lawful practice. Both halves are required. A practitioner who commands the ritual but not the contraindication endangers the person seated in front of them.
Our students arrive from markedly different circumstances. Some have never prepared an infusion. Some have served their families as the person called upon for forty years and seek the vocabulary and structure to match that experience. Many are nurses, doulas, estheticians, and massage therapists incorporating botanical medicine into an existing practice. One graduate had not entered a college classroom since 1984.
The expectation placed upon each of them is identical. Complete the courses. Master the science. Honor the origin of this knowledge, and name it whenever it is used.
Institutional facts.
- Founded
- 2017, by Professor Yvette Nathalie Brown
- Format
- Delivered entirely online. No residency requirement.
- Tuition
- A single tuition payment per program. No subscription and no recurring charge; access to enrolled coursework is retained permanently.
- Pace
- Self-paced enrollment accepted year-round, or cohort study on fixed academic dates.
- Instruction
- Weekly live seminars with Professor Brown for cohort students, supplemented by visiting faculty. All sessions are recorded and archived.
- Upon completion
- African Herbalist Certification and Graduation
Herbalism is treated here as a discipline: a body of knowledge with a documented history, a scientific basis, and an enforceable standard of care. It is taught accordingly.