Taking Courses

All students must register via the online registration portal. Just before the registration period begins (after fall break for the following spring semester, and after spring break for the following fall semester), you will receive notification instructing you to schedule an advising appointment with your academic advisor.

Your academic advisor is a faculty member assigned to you upon entering the program. (Once your thesis committee is determined in the second year, your thesis director becomes your academic advisor.) Even if you don't need registration advice, you should still meet with your advisor to discuss your course line-up.

New incoming MFAs are advised via e-mail by the MFA coordinator regarding fall classes. If you have paid your tuition deposit (or have been granted a waiver) you will be able to register at that time.

Throughout your time in our program, you will undoubtedly have many questions about MFA courses and requirements. On our department website, we have posted Grad Student FAQs, which should help you with most of your registration-related questions.

In general, MFA students should consider the following issues and, if necessary, discuss them with the advisor:

• The balance of hours between elective and writing courses.
• The average number of hours per semester needed to graduate by the target date.
• The status of the out-of-genre requirement.
• Expected MFA examination and thesis defense dates.

The following courses count as electives: CRW 501, 503, 523, 524, 543, 545, 547, 560, 580, 581, 598; ENG 502, 504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 511, 513, 514, 560, 561, 564, 565, 566, 572, 580.

While we currently accept many English courses automatically for credit toward the MFA degree, ENG 501, 503, 554, 556, 558, and 559 can be taken only if the student demonstrates to the MFA coordinator that the course is valuable according to their individual plan of study. This allows us to monitor the balance of pedagogy and literature courses taken by MFA students.

The following courses count as writing workshops: CRW 530, 542, 544, 546, 548, 550. Occasionally a writing workshop is offered by another department (such as Interdisciplinary Studies, formerly GLS), but only CRW writing workshops may be taken toward the MFA degree.

All MFA students are required to complete CRW 520: The Publishing Process. This course will count toward fulfilling the 21 hour elective requirement (‘other graduate literature or publishing courses’).

Students are expected to enroll in no more than 11 hours of coursework until all students have had the opportunity to register. At that point, students may register for additional hours at their discretion, in conjunction with faculty advisement.

Available to you each semester are our departmental course descriptions, as well as course day & time information via SeaNet. Also available is a sample 6-semester course plan.

MFA Registration FAQs

If you have transferred from another graduate program but did not complete the degree, you may be able to transfer up to six credit hours of literature or writing courses. If you already hold a graduate degree, you will not be able to transfer any of the courses taken toward that degree.

If you think you may be able to transfer some credit hours, see the MFA coordinator to determine your eligibility. Credit transfer should take place during the first year of your study here.

MFA students are allowed to take up to six credit hours of CRW 591: Directed Individual Study (DIS) courses during the completion of their degree. The DIS is meant to give students an opportunity to tailor their coursework to fit their individual interests, while working under the supervision of a faculty member.

A DIS should not be used to meet workshop requirements, and will not be approved if the proposed subject is offered by our department as a course; the DIS is intended to be utilized in instances where the subject and coursework proposed are highly specific and not covered by our curriculum.

Please consider it only when it is absolutely necessary for your course of study.

You cannot register for a DIS in the same manner in which you add other courses to your schedule. For the most updated DIS registration information, as well as details about how the DIS will be applied towards degree requirements, please see the DIS info in the FAQs for Current MFA students (at bottom).

MFA students are graded according to the following guidelines (see also the graduate catalogue [2024-25]):

MFA students are expected to do exemplary work, which includes: 

1. Turning in all workshop manuscripts and other assignments on time in clean, professional format.           
2. Writing workshops drafts that demonstrate originality, imagination, mastery of craft issues, ambition, and a knowledge of previously published work in the genre.
3. Actively participating in all workshop activities and discussions.
4. Attending all workshops unless an emergency compels an absence, and in such a case working with the instructor to make up work.
5. Initiating a conference with the instructor.
6. Actively supporting the creative activity of peers.

• All the above would earn an A.
• Some lapses (several absences, work that seems slightly under par, not always being a part of discussion) would earn an A- or B+.
• B is the minimally acceptable grade for passing the workshop; any lower grade indicates that the student has not sufficiently met the requirements of the course.

The workshop is an active and communal way of thinking about a piece of writing to learn something essential about how and why it works-to trace its process and to teach everybody in the room something about writing that they didn't know before. You're sharing your work with a smart, talented, thoughtful, energetic, critical, demanding, thorough, passionate, articulate audience-perhaps the best and most daunting you'll ever know.

No matter how often you hand out a piece for their consideration, it's hard to avoid anxiety on the day of the workshop. Remember that a workshop is not a jury and does not require consensus, let alone unanimity of response- indeed; consensus might be the enemy of great art.

Part of the goal of workshop is for the writer to learn which of the many disparate voices to heed, which criticism is valid, and which is off the mark. The workshop is not a validation session; if there's no risk, maybe something is wrong. Whenever you find yourself in a roomful of writers who all agree, get out fast. Stay open, listen to the voices, consider them, and learn.

You'll often acquire insights more readily from the consideration of other's work than of your own-it's easier to concentrate without the emotional investment, and for some reason, their mistakes and virtues will stand out as vividly as if they were written in different colors of ink. And always remember that the judgment of your instructor is based on years of experience, tens of thousands of pages of reading, countless hours of artful reflection, years of wrestling the right word onto the page, and decades of practice.

Though it is carefully considered, sincere, honest, and valuable, it might quite possibly be wrong-even when it flatters you.