An important feature of our MFA Poetry Program, distinctive among private, arts-based schools, is the teaching experience provided to qualified graduate students.
Thanks to our Graduate Student Instructorship (GSI) program, all Creative Writing - Poetry MFA students may elect to take Composition Theory and Praxis, a semester-long course offered every fall and taught by exceptionally dedicated full-time, tenured faculty in the Department of English. This course provides invaluable grounding in the theoretical and practical elements of teaching Writing and Rhetoric at the undergraduate level; students are mentored closely throughout the course and, as well, when they begin (on an optional basis, of course) teaching one section of Writing and Rhetoric the following semester.
Students are paid as adjunct instructors and may teach one section in both semesters of their second year in the program as well as in the second semester of their first year in the program, provided the Composition Theory and Praxis course has been successfully completed.