3.2 MFA in Creative Writing and Environment Degree Requirements

3.2.1 Degree Requirements (effective Spring 2023)

Requires a total of 54 credits of coursework.

3.2.2 Curricular Policies and Guidelines

Environmental Field Experience

As an MFA student, you are required to engage in an environmentally based internship or field work experience during your program. This work should be somehow related to the content of your thesis. You will design, propose, and complete a field experience relevant to your writing interests. By midterm of the semester before the field work is to begin, you must complete and submit—in consultation with your assigned program advisor or major professor—a MFA Environmental Field Experience (ENGL 5600) Proposal Form to the field experience facilitator. Field work requirements must be met as outlined in the Guidelines for Completion of ENGL 5600: Environmental Field Experience.

Environmental courses in disciplines outside the English department

You design, in consultation with your assigned program advisor or major professor, a self-tailored core of interdisciplinary courses that allow you to pursue fields of knowledge relevant to your writing project. Selections can be made from any ISU courses outside the English Department with an environmental focus. These courses may be at the graduate level; they may also be 3000- or 4000-level undergraduate courses that are used in accordance with English department and Graduate College Policy. The MFA program’s Petition for Approval of Environmental Courses Outside English must be completed, signed by your assigned program advisor or major professor, signed by the CWE area coordinator, and submitted to the Graduate Program Administrative Assistant for POSC approval. You provide an overview and rationale for your selection of outside courses as well as an argument for how each course contributes to your understanding of environment and thus is relevant to your plan of study.

Transfer credits

MFA students must complete a minimum of 22 graduate credits at Iowa State University, regardless of how many credits are transferred. Students may transfer up to 24 credits into the MFA POS, but the actual number of transfer credits approved will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Requests for transfer credit consideration must be made by completing a Transfer Credit Petition form accompanied by required paperwork. Refer to the section regarding transfer credits earlier in this manual for more information.

MFA Thesis

Students write theses that are composed of their own imaginative writing.They make a proposal for a book-length thesis to be approved by their major professor by the end of their third semester in the program. Thesis work produces one document—the thesis itself, which  is considered a work of publishable quality.

3.2.3 Final Oral Defense of the Thesis (Final Oral Examination)

See the section on Graduation for more details and information on finishing up as well as resources with links to very helpful information.

3.2.4 Program and learning outcomes

Program outcomes

• Train writers in the process, craft, aesthetic, and professional demands of creative writing, including grounding in all major literary genres: poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, and scriptwriting.
• Encourage writers to identify and explore the influences of place, the natural world, and the environmental imagination in their stories and lyric expressions.
• Ground students in the literary traditions and techniques of the genres in which they will write and the literature and theory of the environmental imagination.
• Offer writers access to the educational resources of a Research I institution and the nation’s first land grant university to broaden and deepen their understanding of a complex and rapidly-changing cultural and natural environment and the application of that understanding to their works of imaginative and critical writing.
• Mentor students through the process of designing, researching, writing, and refining original, publishable- and performance-quality imaginative literature, including a full-length manuscript of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and/or scriptwriting that is grounded in a firm grasp of craft, technique, and literary tradition, as well as an understanding of the environmental imagination.
• Provide training and opportunities in other elements of a professional literary life, including teaching, literary journal editing, reading series and arts administration, land stewardship, and outreach.

Learning outcomes

• Demonstrate understanding of craft and professional practice through coursework, workshops, and completion of refined imaginative literary manuscripts in multiple genres.
• Identify, research, and examine—through coursework, fieldwork, and literary practice—the natural world and the environmental imagination.
• Broaden and deepen understanding of literary and theoretical traditions of the major genres and the methodologies of craft analysis and practice.
• Broaden and deepen understanding of the cultural and natural environment through significant coursework in environmental courses available at Iowa State University both within and beyond the MFA program and English Department.
• Design, write, workshop, refine, and defend a significant body of publishable- or production-quality imaginative writing, including a full-length thesis manuscript, which demonstrates professional understanding and application of craft and technique, literary tradition, and the environmental imagination.
• Gain practical training and experience in creating and fostering a healthy literary community and sustaining a professional life in letters through teaching and research assistantships and internships, literary journal editorial internships and positions, as well as land stewardship, reading series, and other outreach opportunities.