MFA Advising

The MFA Program assigns all incoming students an advisor. That advisor is typically the instructor of the student’s first-term in-genre workshop. In the event a student’s first-term in-genre workshop is taught by a visiting faculty member or in the unusual circumstance that a student does not take an in-genre workshop in their first term, the Director will assign an advisor to them. The MFA Program Coordinator will email all incoming students with their advisor assignment prior to the start of the semester.

That faculty member will be the student’s advisor for the first year and a half, after which students will begin working with their thesis chair, who will become their advisor for the duration of the program. (See section below on Thesis Chair selection process.) Students are encouraged to become acquainted with all of the MFA faculty, particularly those in their genre, and to build relationships and seek advice from other English Department faculty, the wider UMass community, and poets and writers who visit the program. These relationships will be particularly important when considering who might serve on a student’s Thesis Committee.