Master of Arts in English with an Emphasis on Professional Writing

The Master of Arts in English with an Emphasis on Professional Writing is a thirty-eight hour degree program designed to meet the increasing demand for people with liberal arts education and with a particular skill in writing non-fiction prose.

On admission, students should consult with the advisor at the earliest opportunity concerning their program of study.

For more detailed information and for an application form, write to the department’s graduate director or see the department’s pages on the World Wide Web at the following URL: http://www.wmich.edu/english.

Program Requirements

A student desiring to enter the program should present a thirty-hour undergraduate major with a grade-point average of at least 3.0 and samples both of critical writing about literature and of other expository writing. At least twenty hours of the major must be in courses in literature; no more than fifteen of the thirty should be at the freshman-sophomore level. Applicants lacking an undergraduate major but who have at least 20 hours of work in English with a substantial number of courses in literature and who are otherwise judged eligible may be granted admission to the program on condition that they remedy deficiencies in preparation by taking some undergraduate courses as prerequisites. Applicants must take the Graduate Record Examinations, both the General Test and the Subject Test in Literature in English, and forward their scores to the Department of English.

Required courses in the program are:

(a) three writing courses:

ENGL 6310 - Essay Writing Credits: 3 hrs.
ENGL 6320 - Article Writing Credits: 3 hrs.
ENGL 6330 - Professional Writing: Form and Technique Credits: 3 hrs.

(b) several courses in a field other than English (8-12 hours).

Additional Courses

The additional courses needed to complete a coherent thirty-eight hour program are selected in consultation with the graduate director.