The primary goal at this stage of the program--we're in just our second year--remains to recruit students into the program and to recruit the best students possible. While we are pleased to have the students enrolled that we do, we recognize that we are not yet drawing the numbers nor the caliber of student (in general) that we one day hope to be able to say we do.
 
Significant to our recruiting efforts as we move forward will be our forthcoming partnership with the National Book Foundation, via its National Book Awards on Campus Program (just the second such program in the nation). We expect that this program will bring increased and regular attention to the MFA program, both regionally and nationally. Because the National Book Foundation is a long-established and highly visible entity, based in New York City and at the heart of the book-publishing industry, our association with the National Book Awards (one of the most prestigious annual awards in American publishing) should garner us significant attention. It will also serve as a marker for prospective students as the kind of experience they can expect to have on a regular basis, with attention not only from our permanent faculty, but from some of the best writers in America who will visit our campus and community each year. The NBAOC Program will be the marquee event in our annual reading series, another key recruiting and publicity mechanism. The reading series provides opportunities to draw prospective students to campus and to provide them with a positive experience that might lead them to strongly consider SHSU for their MFA.

We're also making efforts to take advantage of the digital world. We launched a new website for the program this fall, and believe that it will serve as a useful tool not only for our currently enrolled students, but for prospective students. As with everyone else, we maintain an active presence on Facebook and will consider a venture into Twitter.

We're also launching a new online literary journal this spring, The Gordion Review, open to submissions only from graduate students and run by our graduate students, and believe that this, too, will help to spread the word about the MFA program at SHSU. Given the emphasis in our program upon editing and publishing, the new journal provides yet one more opportunity for students to be involved in the publishing experience.

The great majority of students who have applied and who have been accepted come from within SHSU's traditional footprint. A number of the students have come from out of our undergraduate program. While we are glad to be of service to those students, we wish to continue to extend our reach, and are continuing to seek ways by which to accomplish this, including via social media as well as more traditional media. We encourage our faculty to be active in conferences and book festivals, both regionally and nationally, including, for example, the Houston Indie Book Fest in the case of the former, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference in the case of the latter. In each case, we are seeking to establish our profile and to recruit both for the short-term and for the long-term.

The most significant development for the program this past year was the beginning of our partnership with the National Book Foundation and its National Book Awards at Sam Houston program (just the second such program in the nation). The program has already brought increased attention to the MFA program, both regionally and nationally. We expect the collaboration to continue to reap benefits for the MFA program, the Department of English, the university, and the community.  

Last year we launched a new website, and it has served as a useful tool not only for our currently enrolled students but for prospective students. It is regularly updated and provides ease of access to information and forms for students and prospective students. We continue to maintain an active Facebook presence and have even ventured into Twitter, though the latter doesn’t generate much activity for us. 

The Gordion Review has accepted its first submissions.

As we continue to seek to expand the program's reach beyond SHSU's traditional footprint, we've been pleased to admit a student from the University of Wyoming and a student from the University of Central Arkansas.

As we enter our third year as a program, our primary objective remains to recruit students into the program and to recruit the best students possible. We received more completed applications (seven) for the fall this year than in the previous cycle. However, the number of new students actually enrolled this fall (three) will be slightly less than the previous two years, in part because two students we accepted chose to enroll at other institutions, and in part because two other applicants (both from our own undergraduate program) did not meet our minimum standards for the GRE. We continue to encounter the tension between the need to grow the program in terms of numbers and the desire to maintain the minimum standards we expect of any of our graduate students. As one of our goals has been to reach out beyond the traditional recruitment footprint of SHSU, we are pleased to note, as an example, that we’ve enrolled one student from Wyoming this year, and that we had accepted (though she declined) a student from Central Arkansas.

The most significant development for the program this past year was the beginning of our partnership with the National Book Foundation and its National Book Awards at Sam Houston program (just the second such program in the nation). The program has already brought increased attention to the MFA program, both regionally and nationally. We expect the collaboration to continue to reap benefits for the MFA program, the Department of English, the university, and the community.  

Last year we launched a new website, and it has served as a useful tool not only for our currently enrolled students but for prospective students. It is regularly updated and provides ease of access to information and forms for students and prospective students. We continue to maintain an active Facebook presence and have even ventured into Twitter, though the latter doesn’t generate much activity for us. 
To build a career as a writer requires more than “simply” the ability to write compelling stories or to create powerful poetry. It requires an understanding of the profession and its mechanisms, and the ability to navigate those waters, whether as a teacher of creative writing, a member of an arts council, an applicant for a fellowship, a judge of a creative writing contest, an organizer of a reading series, or a publicist for a small publishing house.

In order to assist the professionalization of our graduate students, we will diligently seek to incorporate our students into the para-professional aspects of our own MFA program. For example, in the first year of the National Book Awards at Sam Houston event, held in March of 2013, we made extensive use of the members of Sigma Tau Delta, the Department of English honorary, as volunteers to prepare for events, serve as hosts at receptions, and to assist with the logistics of the visiting writers and their schedules. Though some MFA students were involved through that channel and others, we’d like more MFA students to be involved in the process from beginning to end. We’d also like to involve more graduate students in the production of our annual reading series, including administration, publicity, and hosting. We’d also like to make a stronger effort to encourage our students to submit their work for publication in literary journals and for presentation at creative writing conferences. To assist us in these efforts, we plan to hold professionalization workshops, which will include attention to the elements necessary for either job applications or the submission of creative works to presses, journals, and conferences. In the day-to-day grind of academic life (classes, research, writing, exams), these facets of the professional life of the writer are often overlooked.

As with any graduate program, we need to continue to seek to improve the funding available to support our students, both in terms of the number of students funded and the amount of funding available to each student. We currently share graduate assistantships with the MA program in the Department of English, which at this time provides us with funding for seven MFA students.

We will be seeking additional funding as well for the annual reading series so that we might continue to bring to campus both emerging and established writers. We believe that this is an integral aspect of our students’ education, exposing them to a wider range of writers and instruction than just our core faculty. Currently, the reading series depends upon $3,000 from the Friends of English fund within the Department of English. We would like to pursue at least $5,000 more annually from another source. This funding is separate from the monies dedicated to the National Book Awards at Sam Houston program.