* Full degree requirements and catalogue course descriptions for 2023-24 are posted here.
* 530 courses are always workshop; 580 courses are always elective.
Beginning with the catalogue-year for Fall 2017, you must take a total of 6 hours of writing workshops, or a combination of workshop and forms courses, outside your primary genre. You must include at least one 3-hour writing workshop (CRW 530, CRW 542, CRW 544, CRW 546, CRW 548, CRW 550). Forms courses are CRW 543, 545, and 547.
You may take a maximum of 9 hours of workshop outside your genre for credit. (You must take at least 12 hours of workshop in your primary genre.) Your required out-of-genre courses do not all need to be in the same "secondary" genre.
A fiction writer may take a poetry workshop and a nonfiction forms course. Or, a poet may take a nonfiction workshop and a fiction workshop. Or three 1-hr workshops and a 3-hr workshop.
The key is that the courses are outside your primary genre and that you have at least one 3-hour workshop in the six hours total. (When offered, the CRW 530 screenwriting course counts for this requirement!)
You may take up to 6 "interdisciplinary" hours for elective credit toward your degree. Interdisciplinary means courses other than CRW or ENG courses. Please note that ALL writing workshop credits must come from CRW workshops—not from other departments.
Graduate Liberal Studies courses are considered interdisciplinary courses (see preceding question), so you can only take a total of 6 hours toward your degree. Also, not all GLS courses will automatically count for credit; check with your advisor and/or the MFA Coordinator about any GLS course you wish to take.
An announcement will be made each semester during pre-registration with a list of approved GLS courses for the coming semester.
As listed in the Graduate Catalogue for MFA degree requirements, you may choose from the following English courses for elective credits: ENG 502, 504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 511, 512, 513, 514, 560, 561,563, 572, 580.
You may not transfer-in coursework that has counted toward another degree. If you have taken graduate-level courses that did not count toward another degree, a maximum of six hours (—per our own Department requirements; other programs differ—) may be eligible to count as transfer credit. However, all requests regarding transfer credit must be made in person to our MFA coordinator.
Be prepared to submit an official syllabus for the course(s) to the coordinator to determine the appropriate UNCW course equivalency. Be prepared also to submit proposed equivalent course(s) by presenting the UNCW catalogue course description for each course. Please see the transfer credit page for more information and for the form.
You will complete the form and submit it to the MFA coordinator for review. If the MFA coordinator signs approval, then the student will submit the form, along with an official transcript showing the satisfactory completion of courses offered for transfer credit, to the Graduate School for final determination.
**Please note that ALL writing workshop credits must come from UNCW CRW workshops—not from other departments/institutions.
There are a couple of paragraphs of important information you need to review. Be sure to read all of it very carefully, because there is language housed there that you need to be sure to represent in your application regarding your initial intent to move to NC.
Once you have lived in NC for one year (typically from the date your lease began), you’ll submit an application for residency determination into the RDS system for their review and decision. We strongly urge you to thoroughly read the entire Residency Guidelines provided: there is, for example, a list of supporting documents in the Initial Consideration section that will help strengthen your application.
The MFA program does not have rules about minimum or maximum hours per semester, but in order to be considered full-time by the Graduate School you must take at least 9 hours in a semester (except in your final year when you are taking thesis hours, which automatically qualify you as full-time).
The full-time or part-time designation may affect your financial aid; for example you must be considered half-time and be enrolled in at least 4.5 hours in order to borrow graduate student loans. Please contact the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid, or at 910.962-3177, if you have questions about how the number of hours for which you are registered might affect your financial aid. Also, see the UNCW Academic Regulations section at the bottom of this page.
What constitutes a credit hour (i.e., what is the expectation of work)?
See the Registrar definition of a credit hour.
You will be able to register for up to 11 credit hours a semester. In order to enroll for more, you will need to request permission for an override from the MFA Coordinator.
The only GTA enrollment minimum is that you must be enrolled for a graduate-level course for that semester in order to receive an assistantship. Having said that, there are other factors that need to be considered, such as being eligible for financial aid, or having loan deferment issues, or issues with private health insurance premiums.
Students with a full-time TAship must enroll in 5 credit hours to keep full-time status.
Yes, on a space-available basis (though not recommended for the first semester in the MFA program). However, you may not take two full-time (3-credit) workshops in the same genre in the same semester.
For example, you may simultaneously take Clyde Edgerton's 3-credit fiction workshop and a visiting writer's 1- or 2-credit fiction workshop. You may not take Clyde Edgerton's 3-credit fiction workshop and Robert Siegel's 3-credit fiction workshop in the same semester.
(Please note that preference for available workshop seats must be given to in-genre students, and to students closer to graduation.)
Workshops will not be counted as electives, per the MFA coordinator. Please plan your schedule accordingly!
CRW 503: Creative Writing Pedagogy is designed to assist those MFA students who are teaching CRW 201 in the same semester. Therefore, only teaching assistants or graduate students teaching CRW 201 as a DIS may take the Pedagogy course. Please see the bottom of this page for more information about the CRW 201 DIS.
The (new) registration portal opens in early November at 9:00 AM for Spring registration. No PIN is needed for grad students, nor time tickets issued.
The portal is accessed via SharePoint at https://uncw4.sharepoint.com/SitePages/Registration.aspx.
Please note the resources on this registration portal SharePoint site, including: “Need help? Click here to learn more about the registration process,” which takes you to the instructions page—all you need to navigate the new system is found there, including a brief helpful pdf with photo guide.
You will be able to register for up to 11 credit hours a semester. In order to enroll for more, you will need to request permission for an override from the MFA Coordinator.
Make an appointment to meet with your faculty advisor (assigned in October; you'll be notified via email), who should have sign-up times —or at least office hours— posted on their office door. Print out your degree audit and bring it along to this meeting.
To check your degree audit, use this link for Degree Works: https://degreeworks-respdashboard.uncw.edu/RespDashboard/ (may require a login, or a logout + log back in).
You can view course offerings via SeaNet. Click "search for courses" and choose the term; select "creative writing" in the subject list and "graduate" in course level, then click "class search" at the bottom of the page. (You can ignore all other options.)
To see another department's course offerings, repeat the process by selecting another subject (English, for example) from the list.
These courses are by permission only, meaning you will not be able to automatically get in on SeaNet. Instead, you will be alerted via email on the crwmfa listserv to sign up on a sheet in the main office.
If you are on the class list, department administrator Megan Hubbard will set the SeaNet system to allow you to add the class. If a wait-list is necessary, that will be managed by the MFA Coordinator, who will contact you if a space opens up.
Priority for visiting writers' workshops is given to students in the genre, and those who are graduating. However, there is always last-minute shuffling, so there is a decent chance that waitlisted students will get into these workshops.
An elective.
This one-credit intensive course was designed to accompany Writers' Week. Students will meet at scheduled days from mid-September through October to familiarize themselves with the work of our visiting writers and to learn the ins and outs of organizing the week.
As a group, we are responsible for keeping the week itself running smoothly. Class members will participate in the many facets of the week, from introducing the writers at readings to driving them around town. Students are expected to attend a total of 10 event-hours over the course of the symposium. E-mail the Writers Week coordinator (listed with course description above) for specific details.
The Writers Week Symposium course can be taken for 1 credit (CRW 540) or 2 credits (CRW 541 + CRW 540 corequesite). The 1cr course (CRW 540) is an elective credit, but the student may add CRW 541 as an additional 1-credit, in-genre writing workshop, which counts towards the requirement for a minimum of 12 credit hours of writing workshop in the primary genre. (Note: you may take 540 as a stand-alone elective, but in order to take 541 writing, you must also enroll in 540.)
Yes, if space is available. On the sign-up sheet for Writers Week, you will note which genre you wish to work in. You will be required to fulfill all the work in the genre for which you sign up, i.e., the conference, workshop, craft talk, etc.
You may attend other events, but in order to get credit you must meet all requirements in the genre for which you sign up. You and the instructor will also need to inform the MFA Coordinator via email that you should receive secondary genre credit.
You may repeat the same forms course once (with a different professor) for credit: Graduate Catalogue course descriptions. Note: there is no requirement to take forms classes, but it is assumed that writers will want to do this. It is strongly suggested.
You may take up to 18 hours of workshop in your primary genre. (Workshops are offered in 1-hr and 3-hr units.) Graduate Catalogue course descriptions
For MFA opportunities in publishing, please see this webpage. Contact Prof. Emily Smith in The Publishing Laboratory for questions regarding editing and book-publishing courses, Pub Lab internships, and the Publishing Certificate. She can be reached at 910.962-7401.
See the magazine link given and the course description in SeaNet. Contact Prof. Anna Lena Phillips Bell, 910.962-7489, for information.
See the magazine link given and the course description in SeaNet. Contact Prof. Philip Gerard, 910.962-3329, for information.
Contact your professors individually and see if they will add you back to their courses. Professors: In such cases, you can ask Megan to lower the cap on your course by one (so that nobody else can take this student's place when registration via SeaNet reopens), and to give the student a registration override.
Contact the professor directly, and ask to be put on the waitlist if there is one, or added if he or she is so inclined. (For visiting writers' courses, contact the MFA Coordinator.)
Please note that in our MFA program-as in any MFA program-you are never guaranteed to get to work with a particular professor in a particular semester. Professors go on leave; scheduled classes are changed or cancelled, etc. The reality is that you will not get every course you want.
However, we are committed to making sure you graduate on time and can meet all your course requirements. So, for example, if you are in your last semester and still need an out-of-genre workshop to graduate, but you don't get into any of these workshops on SeaNet, contact the MFA Coordinator. We will find a way to solve such emergencies.
In addition, you are always guaranteed a workshop in your primary genre each semester, though it may not always be with your first choice of professor.
Please visit the Withdrawal page.
You must register through the Graduate School and their online forms in SharePoint (for 599, under Registration Forms section—it's a DocuSign) under your thesis director's name; you cannot take thesis hours until you have a thesis director (assigned in spring of your second year). You cannot register for thesis hours via SeaNet/the new Registration Portal. The only way to register for thesis hours is through the Graduate School website.
Yes, but you MUST request permission from thesis director to do so, according to their availability. Thesis hours are "graded" (S/U grades) and your thesis director must put in the grade at the end of the semester, even for summer hours, or else you won't get credit. (Note that some directors aren't available during the summer, so you may not be able to register for summer thesis hours.)
Yes, you can take any number of thesis hours (6 total required) in any given semester. Again, though, you MUST notify your thesis director any time you sign up for thesis hours.
Most directors do not require that you show them thesis work until your penultimate semester—the assumption is that you are working on your thesis throughout your time in the program. However, all faculty work differently. Check with your thesis director any time you sign up for thesis hours.
Students enrolled in at least 1 thesis hour are considered full-time for registration/financial aid purposes. See the Academic Regulations section below for more details.
If you wish to remain on the student health insurance plan in your final semesters when you're taking less hours, here is some information you need to know about eligibility:
Once you have received format approval from the Graduate School, you'll need to email to GradThesis@uncw.edu and Lisa Bertini an electronic copy of your thesis (.pdf file) for archival. See the MFA Handbook for more information regarding thesis content requirements, and see the Graduate School's webpage for Current Students for thesis formatting.
Yes. In your second or third year you may apply to be a group-leader in CRW 201, Introduction to Creative Writing, for DIS (Directed Independent Study) credit. The call to apply for this opportunity will come in spring semester, for the following fall.
If we only have a limited number of CRW 201 group-leader positions available, we will give priority to third-year MFA students. Second-year MFAs can reapply the following year.
DIS registration is completed via a DocuSign from the Graduate School's Forms webpage ('Students' tab). Either the student or the professor directing the DIS may initiate the DocuSign, but the student may only start the routing workflow (by entering email addresses) and then fill in their name and ID number at the top of the form and sign it at the bottom. When the student adds their signature, the DocuSign will route to the instructor, and the instructor will fill out the rest of the information on the form. (Alternatively, the instructor may complete the entire DocuSign.) Once the instructor signs, it will forward to the MFA Coordinator for approving signature. The form then routes to the Graduate School, who registers the student for the DIS. The Graduate School must receive the completed DocuSign two days before the end of Drop-Add.
Yes, you can take any number (1-6) of DIS hours (max of 3cr per semester), aligning with your needs as they relate to tuition costs and/or your personal course plan towards fulfilling degree requirements.
(The standard is a minimum of 750 minutes of instructional time or the equivalent [comparable level of work and student learning] per credit hour.)
You will establish with the faculty member an agreement for a work plan that satisfies this requirement.
Yes. You may take a maximum of 6 DIS credits toward your degree (max of 3cr per semester). The purpose of a DIS is to serve as a course that the department does not otherwise offer.
Faculty are discouraged from overseeing DIS's with students simply because a student can't fit a certain course into the student's schedule, or did not get into a particular desired course that semester.
In DegreeWorks, the audit system recognizes CRW 591 DIS as "other literature courses"—an elective. If you've taken a "reading-based" DIS, which should count as an elective and not a writing course, you should be fine.
If you intend to take a "writing-based" DIS, the MFA coordinator will need to fix this for you on your audit once you apply for graduation. You will simply have to let the coordinator know your DIS is showing up incorrectly.
DIS writing hours will count toward your total (21) writing hours requirement, but do not count toward satisfying the 12 hour minimum workshop hours in your primary genre; nor will they count as the required 3-hr workshop in a secondary genre.