Develop Skills And Knowledge Base In Creative Writing
Students who graduate with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) will have developed the requisite skills and knowledge base in creative writing.
Objective
To Offer Challenging Workshops Consistently And Frequently
In accordance with the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ “Hallmarks of a Successful MFA Program in Creative Writing,” we will offer “challenging workshops” each semester in fiction writing. These writing-intensive courses will offer students multiple opportunities for submission and revision of their work. In keeping with the fundamental nature of workshop, the students will provide and receive critical feedback not only from the professor but from fellow students. The range of commentary from close and attentive readers will provide the authors with essential feedback, both objective and subjective, for the revision and completion of their stories.
Indicator
Workshop Offerings And Opportunities
We have offered the graduate fiction workshop each semester since the program's inception in the fall of 2012. In the graduate fiction workshop for the spring of 2014, eleven students submitted, workshopped, and revised three stories apiece for a total of thirty-three. For copyright and proprietary reasons, we cannot provide sample student stories since the documents in this database are publicly accessible. We have provided a document that contains sample student-to-student feedback for two stories from the graduate fiction workshop. Bear in mind that the bulk of feedback is provided to the author orally in the course of a 35- to 50-minute discussion of each story. In each case, the feedback emerges organically from the stories themselves and the particular requirements of each story.
Indicator
Nature Of Writing Workshop Experiences
These writing-intensive courses will offer students multiple opportunities for submission and revision of their work. The range of commentary from close and attentive readers will provide the authors with essential feedback, both objective and subjective, for the revision and completion of their stories.
Criterion
Access To Writing Workshop Experience
Each year not less than 10 students will complete a creative work for review and revision through the workshop experience.
Finding
Writing Workshop Results
We have offered the graduate fiction workshop each semester since the program's inception in the fall of 2012. In the graduate fiction workshop for the spring of 2014, eleven students submitted, workshopped, and revised three stories apiece for a total of thirty-three. For copyright and proprietary reasons, we cannot provide sample student stories since the documents in this database are publicly accessible. We have provided a document that contains sample student-to-student feedback for two stories from the graduate fiction workshop. Bear in mind that the bulk of feedback is provided to the author orally in the course of a 35- to 50-minute discussion of each story. In each case, the feedback emerges organically from the stories themselves and the particular requirements of each story.
Action
To Consistently Offer Full Poetry Workshops
In its first two years, the MFA program has been overloaded with prose/fiction writers relative to poets. We want to be able to offer the graduate poetry workshop every semester, and to do so with a full complement of 8 to 12 MFA students.
Objective
Extensive Literary Study
In accordance with the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ Hallmarks of a Successful MFA Program in Creative Writing, our program will require “extensive literary study,” as writers must become “expert and wide-ranging reader(s)” in order to become successful writers. Our curriculum will “balance the practice of the art of writing with the study of literature.”
Indicator
Equivalent Coursework And Successful Completion Of Written Comprehensive Exams
We will require the students in our MFA Program in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing to meet the same requirements for the study of literature as the MA students in literature in the Department of English. This includes equivalent coursework (twelve hours of literature classes plus critical theory and narrative and/or poetic theory), as well as the successful completion of the same written comprehensive exams required of the MA students.
Criterion
Rate Of Comprehensive Exam Success
The MFA program will expect all participants make successful completion of ENGL department comprehensive examinations.
Finding
MFA Candidate Comprehensive Exam Results
With the program two years old, the first MFA candidates to face comprehensive examination will do so in October-November 2014.
Action
Measure MFA Candidates' Rates Of Success On Comprehensive Exams
As the MFA candidates begin to take the comprehensive exams, we will monitor their success or failure relative the MA students with the broader Department of English.
Objective
To Write Literary Short Fiction In A Realist Narrative Mode
Students in the MFA program in creative writing, editing, and publishing will be able to produce quality literary works of short fiction in a realist narrative mode.
Indicator
Writing Assessment
In the graduate fiction workshop, ENG 5331, students will be required to submit, workshop, and revise three complete short stories. Near the end of the semester, the professor will ask each student to submit one of his or her pieces, written in a realist narrative mode, to be included in the assessment. In the realist mode, writers should be able to create fully imagined and compelling three-dimensional characters; artfully rendered settings, whether of this world or another; surprising and convincing plots and structures; original and texturally rich language, including metaphors and other kinds of figurative language; and, ultimately, stories that either say something new or that find a new way to say something we thought we already knew about the complex human experience.
Criterion
Realist Narrative Mode Rubric
The rubric provides a set of questions to use when evaluating the fiction produced by the graduate students in the fiction workshop, ENG 5331. It asks the readers to evaluate the student's relative mastery of the conventions of the realist narrative mode, the dominant mode of American fiction produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Three members of the Department of English faculty will evaluate holistically each of the stories, bearing in mind a rubric that asks them to consider the following fundamental characteristics of the realist narrative mode: characters, setting, plot, structure, language, point of view, and originality.
We anticipate that 80 percent of the students enrolled should be able to meet or exceed "relative mastery of the conventions of the realist narrative mode."
Finding
Evaluation Of Student Stories
The three members of the Department of English, assessing the work holistically bearing in mind the applicability of the rubric provided, found that each of the eleven sample works of student fiction, one from each student enrolled in the Spring 2014 Workshop, met or exceeded “relative mastery of the conventions of the realist narrative mode.” Seven of the eleven short stories demonstrated clear promise for future publication based on the basic elements of fiction (character, plot, setting, point of view, structure, language, etc.), but also in terms of originality and readerly engagement. Each of the remaining four stories, despite their relative faults in various categories, clearly met the standards of a graduate fiction workshop based on the same considerations, and the faculty members expressed hope that the these stories, with more extensive revision, might find publication in a literary journal, and if not these particular stories, then other works by these same writers.
Thus the program met the basic goal, exceeding 80% of students demonstrating acceptable rubric skills. 60+% demonstrated exemplary skill levels, commensurate with successful professional publishing of such creative endeavors.
Action
Continue Emphasis On Realist Mode And Expand Modes
We will continue to stress the fundamentals of realist literary fiction within the workshop structure, but we will also seek to offer workshops that focus upon non-realist modes of fiction.
Objective
To Prepare Students For Careers In Editing And Publishing
Students in the MFA program in creative writing, editing, and publishing will be able to seek careers not only as writers but as editors, book designers, and publishers.
Indicator
Portfolio Assessment
In the graduate practicum in publishing course, ENGL 5333, students are expected to develop competencies in three core areas: editing, book design, and the publishing industry. Near the end of the semester, the professor will ask students to submit a portfolio of work that will demonstrate their competencies in each of these three areas: editing, design, and the publishing industry. Three members of the Department of English faculty will evaluate each of these portfolios based on rubrics provided by the professor.
Criterion
Portfolio Assessement
For Editing: The students will demonstrate through the assignments a familiarity and competency with the discipline of editing.
For Book Design: The designs will be assessed based on the principles of basic design theory; creativity and originality; technical competency with design software; and editing.
For the Publishing Industry: The students’ work will meet or exceed the criteria established by the professor of record.
We expect more than 80 percent of the students to meet or exceed the criteria established by the professor in each of the three categories.
Finding
Development Of Portfolio And Appropriate Rubrics
During the spring of 2014, the program took steps toward the full implementation of the portfolio process. Students in the class assembled and designed their own digital poetry anthologies. The process required students to study a broad range of poetry anthologies, to establish the criteria for their own anthologies, and then to design and edit the digital book itself. Students were also required to write an introduction to the anthology, explaining the goals of the anthology and the inclusion of particular poems and poets. Because the anthologies were intended for classroom purposes only, we have included only a brief sample of one such work here, as the poems included often remain protected by copyright. In the fall of 2014, we intend to begin the full portfolio review.
Action
Fully Implement The Portfolio Process
We will fully implement the portfolio process.
Goal
Student Recruitment
We are a very new program and have only a handful of students enrolled. Our goal is to recruit qualified students to enroll in the MFA program.
Objective
Recruit Qualified And Exceptional Students
We will recruit and accept into the program only students who can reasonably be expected to succeed within it, ideally between five and ten students per year.
KPI
Incoming Graduate Student GPA
The program will use incoming GPA scores as one indicator of likely student success. We will aim to maintain a minimum 3.00 standard for applications, with an expectation of not more than 15% allowable exemptions.
Result
Incoming Graduate Student GPA Performance
Over the first calendar year of the program, we admitted 11 students with an average GPA of 3.48. Only two exemptions were granted and both of these students, in addition to other considerations, presented acceptable GRE scores.
For the 2014-2015 academic year, the program has admitted 3 additional students with an average GPA of 3.47. No exemptions were requested or granted.
Total exemption rate for existing MFA students was 14%
KPI
Incoming Graduate Student GRE
In its early development, the program will use GRE scores (with emphasis on the Verbal section) as an indicator of likely student success.
Result
Incoming Graduate Student GRE Performance
Over the first calendar year of the program, we admitted 11 students with an average GRE (Verbal) of 159. No student entering the program presented a GRE (Verbal) score of less than 152.
The overall combined GRE (Verbal + Quantitative) for these incoming students was 309, comparing favorably with the total ENGL graduate average of 299 in the same period.
For the 2014-2015 academic year, we have admitted 3 students with an average GRE (Verbal) of 156. No student entering the program presented a GRE (Verbal) score of less than 153.
The overall combined GRE (Verbal + Quantitative) for these incoming students was 307, comparing favorably will the total ENGL graduate average of 299 in the same period.
KPI
Student Recruitment
Through visits and advertising campaigns to English majors and minors, undergraduate creative writing classes, venues such as Poets & Writers, The Writer's Chronicle, and tables at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair, we hope to recruit between five and ten students to begin the MFA at SHSU.
Result
Recruitment Results
For the fall semester of 2014, we received seven completed applications. We accepted five students and three have enrolled for the fall, bringing out total current enrollment to fourteen. The other two students chose to enroll in MFA programs elsewhere. Two students did not meet the minimum requirements for admission, specifically our expectation of a minimum score of 153 on the verbal portion of the GRE. It is worth noting that we also added one student who began in the spring of 2014 and that we lost one student at the same time (grades).
Action
Local And National Recruitment
1. We will continue to advertise in such national publications as Poets & Writers and The Writer's Chronicle.
2. We currently have 51 undergraduate creative writing minors at SHSU. We will develop outreach opportunities to educate those students about the MFA program.
3. We will continue to vigorously promote the National Book Awards at Sam Houston, a marquee event that draws attention to our campus and our program.
4. We will continue to be a presence at local and regional literary events, such as the Houston Menil Indie Book Fest.
5. We will continue to be a presence at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference.