Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2020-2021 Level: Graduate
Campus Department: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Major [UG] / Program [Grad]
Program Name: English MA (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
At the end of the fall semester, all the graduate faculty write evaluations of first-year MA candidates who have applied for TFships and/or TAships. Since almost all first-year MAs apply, these comments become a comprehensive review of individual and cohort performance. Faculty are asked to comment not only on applicant fitness for teaching but also on their progress in the program. If any concerns are raised by faculty, the program director follows up as s/he sees fit (such as, meeting with candidates, consulting more with individual faculty, raising concerns with the dean of graduate studies).
All MA candidates are required to pass a comprehensive qualifying exam in order to graduate. The exam, offered each fall, and in the spring by petition, gives MAs the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge about literary periodization and to use close-reading skills. Three hours in length, it asks MAs to complete three of five questions—each one addressing a different major literary period. For each question, test-takers are provided with a passage from a work of literature; the name of the work’s author; the date of the work’s publication; and some prompts about the work and a keyword relevant to it, such as lyric or Transcendentalism. Test-takers are asked to address one or more of these prompts through a close reading of the passage. The objective is to demonstrate mastery of a wide range of skills in answering each question. The exam is graded pass/fail. Last year we clarified the scope of the comprehensive exam questions and revised the online description [https://www.bc.edu/content/bc- web/schools/mcas/departments/english/graduate/master-of-arts- program/guidelines.html#comprehensive_exam].
MAs are also examined on a basic reading knowledge of one foreign language. The language exam consists of a two-hour translation of one scholarly, fictional, or non-fictional passage with the aid of a dictionary. We offer language exams in the fall semester at the same time as the comprehensive examination, and in the spring by petition. They may be taken during candidates’ first or second year. A wide range of languages can be accommodated. In recent years, we have set exams in Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Irish, Korean, Latin, Old English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Japanese. MAs may waive the exam if they have substantial and recent undergraduate foreign-language coursework; or if they take an intensive summer language course; or if they have native-level proficiency and have completed a university degree through the medium of the language. The exam is graded pass/fail.
The MA program director administers an online survey to all graduating MA candidates, asking for their input about whether they have met the stated outcomes of the program. Last year, 20 graduating MAs completed the survey—a record—giving us valuable data. The director of the program also meets with all graduating MAs as a group to discuss outcomes and elicit suggestions for improving the program. The director also invites second-year MAs to meet with him/her one-on-one to discuss their experiences and to elaborate on any feedback they are willing to provide.
Over the past two years, we have conducted several additional surveys soliciting feedback from MAs and faculty members on topics including career aspirations, the TA experience, the long- standing curricular requirement to take a course on literary theory, and our relatively new policy of offering combined graduate/undergraduate seminars. Feedback on all these aspects of the program continues to be positive.
Over the last three years, the English MA and PhD program directors have sought permission to hire a GA for Alumni Outreach and Research to gather and organize evidence about learning outcomes and career paths, maintain active links with graduates, and disseminate information to prospective graduate candidates. Last year our application for an ILA Innovations in Graduate Education grant for this purpose was not successful. We continue to think that this is a resource that is vital to determining whether graduates have achieved the stated outcomes for the degree.
Review Process:
The Graduate Curriculum Committee, consisting of the Chair, the MA program director and assistant director, the PhD program director and assistant director, the writing program director, and other interested faculty, meets annually following Commencement to review exit data and make recommendations to the whole department for improvement. The committee assesses each of the stated learning outcomes in deciding where to devote efforts at improvement.
Resulting Program Changes:
Changes to Our Admissions/Recruitment Process
In conformity with social distancing guidelines under the COVID-19 pandemic, the MA program director held a ‘visit day’ remotely via videoconference this spring. Feedback on this session, which was well-attended, was very positive. The Director also corresponded personally with all admits, and met virtually with many of them individually. Despite not being able to welcome our admitted applicants to campus in person, have them meet our colleagues, take them to lunch, or tour campus with them as we normally would, we registered an unusually high admissions yield this year: 36% (last year’s above-average yield was 27%; the average for the previous five years was 25%). In the fall, we will welcome 27 new MA students, and we are pleased with these numbers.
Also as a response to COVID, and like many other departments, we made the GRE exam optional for applicants this year. We anticipate reviewing this change with the department and will consider keeping the exam optional.
Curricular Changes: Graduate/Undergraduate Seminars and Alt-Ac Opportunities
Beginning in AY 2017/18, we piloted a program of combined graduate/undergraduate seminars. These have largely been a success. This year, we conducted an internal review of these courses, including surveying all current MA and PhD students about their experience with these hybrid seminars. Students and faculty report appreciating the flexibility these courses offer.
The Graduate Curriculum Committee, in response to feedback from MAs and PhDs, is exploring ways to offer instruction in public humanities and digital humanities and to offer more ‘alt-ac’ career guidance. Last year we hired an English PhD candidate to assemble a dossier surveying what other humanities graduate programs have done with regard to alternative career preparation; this document will help guide our further curricular innovation in this area. In the past few years, we have regularly offered a new graduate writing workshop, Carlo Rotella’s “Experimental Writing for Scholars,” which provides alternative venues for graduate student writing.
This year, in collaboration with the History Department, we have instituted a new Graduate Certificate in the Digital Humanities. The new Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities offers a coordinated curriculum that is feasible for graduate candidates to complete alongside existing degree requirements. The program combines interdisciplinary methodological training with discipline-specific coursework to provide students with training and institutional recognition of their accomplishments in this fast-growing field. The program offers M.A. and Ph.D. students the opportunity to diversify their skill-sets and produce projects such as digital archives, data visualizations, online exhibits, and scholarly websites. This project-based approach puts a premium on collaboration and interdisciplinary inquiry. Introductory and Capstone classes were offered this year by our colleagues in the library, Bee Lehrman and Stephen Sturgeon, and we also listed a number of department-specific courses fulfilling the departmental requirement (2-3 each semester this year). These courses proved very popular. Certificate holders will enhance their employment prospects in both traditional academia as well as in publishing, government, museums, libraries, archives, and other alt-ac fields. The Certificate also proved attractive to new admits.
Writing Program
At the center of the MA program is the opportunity to serve as a TF, supported by our robust writing program and a required spring pedagogy course (ENGL8825: Composition Theory and the Teaching of Writing). TFships are a major attraction for applicants and account for a significant portion of the writing program director’s workload each year. Traditionally, the writing program director alternates teaching ENGL8825 with a colleague qualified in writing studies. New hires in our department in Composition and Rhetoric (beginning this fall) make this an exciting time for evaluation and reinvigoration of the writing program.
Two years ago, we streamlined the TF/TA evaluation process, making it less onerous for faculty and thus producing more consistent and equitable evaluations of applicants. We are happy with the new protocols for soliciting feedback and deliberating over individual applicants. A challenge is that TF/TA assignments must be finalized before fall grades are due. We have discussed instituting a retroactive GPA cutoff for TF applicants in order to allow for flexibility in cases where an applicant’s final assignment does not meet faculty expectations.
Support for First Generation and Non-traditional Graduate Students
In collaboration with the History Department, last year we applied for and were awarded an ILA Innovations in Graduate Education grant, renewable for up to three years, to fund a graduate-led working group designed to support graduate candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, including (the overlapping categories of) economically disadvantaged students; racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and first-generation college graduates. The MA program director serves as unofficial adviser for the group.
Challenges to our MA Students: Early Start Date, Funding, and Campus Jobs
The University’s decision in 2015 to move to an academic calendar that begins before Labor Day has significant negative financial, logistical, and pedagogical ramifications for our MAs, who are typically moving to Boston from out of town. Because all other area colleges and universities begin after Labor Day, few leases in Boston/Brookline/Cambridge begin before 1 September. It has become part of the MA program director’s job to arrange for emergency housing for any MAs who need it in the first week of classes. This is not ideal, because it involves imposing upon the kindness of our colleagues and raises issues of equity and accessibility, for example in the case of a graduate candidate with a disability who requires special accommodations, or a graduate candidate who does not feel comfortable rooming with someone of a different gender.
Moreover, the housing situation can be a distraction from crucial August and early September events: university orientation; department orientation; our ‘summer reading seminar,’ a cohort- building one-time meeting held on the first Friday of classes; and the start of classes. Returning to the pre-2015 academic calendar would solve the problem. Or the University could provide free emergency housing for a few days at the start of the academic year.
Because our funding package is less than that of many of our peer terminal MA programs, our admissions yield is lower than it might otherwise be. Each year, several applicants email to explain that the only component preventing them from accepting our offer was the incomplete funding package. The standard $11,000 tuition scholarship both years, plus up to $13,000 for teaching in the second year, adds up to a benefit/salary of $35,000 at current rates; but tuition for the 30-credit degree will cost $53,040 over two years at AY 2020/21 rates (up from $48,720 at AY 2018/19 rates and $51,000 at AY 2019/20 rates). To catch up to peer institutions, we should offer tuition scholarships of at least $15,000 and consider raising the pay for TFships and TAships.
Other financial considerations impinge on MAs’ academic progress while in the program. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts, many MAs were working part-time on-campus jobs to make ends meet. When campus closed, only some of their established hours could be sustained. While individual campus supervisors have been understanding, the net result is that MAs this year coped with new financial precarity. Several students switched from a full-time enrollment in our program (and community) to a part-time enrollment.
We find that these financial challenges translate into issues of access, equity, and justice in our community. Historically, given our status as a partially-funded program, we have had inconsistent success in attracting AHANA applicants and low-income applicants. Each year, AHANA students and low-income/first-generation students are underrepresented among all applicants.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
Changes to Our Admissions/Recruitment Process
In conformity with social distancing guidelines under the COVID-19 pandemic, the MA program director held a ‘visit day’ remotely via videoconference this spring. Feedback on this session, which was well-attended, was very positive. The Director also corresponded personally with all admits, and met virtually with many of them individually. Despite not being able to welcome our admitted applicants to campus in person, have them meet our colleagues, take them to lunch, or tour campus with them as we normally would, we registered an unusually high admissions yield this year: 36% (last year’s above-average yield was 27%; the average for the previous five years was 25%). In the fall, we will welcome 27 new MA students, and we are pleased with these numbers.
Also as a response to COVID, and like many other departments, we made the GRE exam optional for applicants this year. We anticipate reviewing this change with the department and will consider keeping the exam optional.
Curricular Changes: Graduate/Undergraduate Seminars and Alt-Ac Opportunities
Beginning in AY 2017/18, we piloted a program of combined graduate/undergraduate seminars. These have largely been a success. This year, we conducted an internal review of these courses, including surveying all current MA and PhD students about their experience with these hybrid seminars. Students and faculty report appreciating the flexibility these courses offer.
The Graduate Curriculum Committee, in response to feedback from MAs and PhDs, is exploring ways to offer instruction in public humanities and digital humanities and to offer more ‘alt-ac’ career guidance. Last year we hired an English PhD candidate to assemble a dossier surveying what other humanities graduate programs have done with regard to alternative career preparation; this document will help guide our further curricular innovation in this area. In the past few years, we have regularly offered a new graduate writing workshop, Carlo Rotella’s “Experimental Writing for Scholars,” which provides alternative venues for graduate student writing.
This year, in collaboration with the History Department, we have instituted a new Graduate Certificate in the Digital Humanities. The new Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities offers a coordinated curriculum that is feasible for graduate candidates to complete alongside existing degree requirements. The program combines interdisciplinary methodological training with discipline-specific coursework to provide students with training and institutional recognition of their accomplishments in this fast-growing field. The program offers M.A. and Ph.D. students the opportunity to diversify their skill-sets and produce projects such as digital archives, data visualizations, online exhibits, and scholarly websites. This project-based approach puts a premium on collaboration and interdisciplinary inquiry. Introductory and Capstone classes were offered this year by our colleagues in the library, Bee Lehrman and Stephen Sturgeon, and we also listed a number of department-specific courses fulfilling the departmental requirement (2-3 each semester this year). These courses proved very popular. Certificate holders will enhance their employment prospects in both traditional academia as well as in publishing, government, museums, libraries, archives, and other alt-ac fields. The Certificate also proved attractive to new admits.
Writing Program
At the center of the MA program is the opportunity to serve as a TF, supported by our robust writing program and a required spring pedagogy course (ENGL8825: Composition Theory and the Teaching of Writing). TFships are a major attraction for applicants and account for a significant portion of the writing program director’s workload each year. Traditionally, the writing program director alternates teaching ENGL8825 with a colleague qualified in writing studies. New hires in our department in Composition and Rhetoric (beginning this fall) make this an exciting time for evaluation and reinvigoration of the writing program.
Two years ago, we streamlined the TF/TA evaluation process, making it less onerous for faculty and thus producing more consistent and equitable evaluations of applicants. We are happy with the new protocols for soliciting feedback and deliberating over individual applicants. A challenge is that TF/TA assignments must be finalized before fall grades are due. We have discussed instituting a retroactive GPA cutoff for TF applicants in order to allow for flexibility in cases where an applicant’s final assignment does not meet faculty expectations.
Support for First Generation and Non-traditional Graduate Students
In collaboration with the History Department, last year we applied for and were awarded an ILA Innovations in Graduate Education grant, renewable for up to three years, to fund a graduate-led working group designed to support graduate candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, including (the overlapping categories of) economically disadvantaged students; racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and first-generation college graduates. The MA program director serves as unofficial adviser for the group.
Challenges to our MA Students: Early Start Date, Funding, and Campus Jobs
The University’s decision in 2015 to move to an academic calendar that begins before Labor Day has significant negative financial, logistical, and pedagogical ramifications for our MAs, who are typically moving to Boston from out of town. Because all other area colleges and universities begin after Labor Day, few leases in Boston/Brookline/Cambridge begin before 1 September. It has become part of the MA program director’s job to arrange for emergency housing for any MAs who need it in the first week of classes. This is not ideal, because it involves imposing upon the kindness of our colleagues and raises issues of equity and accessibility, for example in the case of a graduate candidate with a disability who requires special accommodations, or a graduate candidate who does not feel comfortable rooming with someone of a different gender.
Moreover, the housing situation can be a distraction from crucial August and early September events: university orientation; department orientation; our ‘summer reading seminar,’ a cohort- building one-time meeting held on the first Friday of classes; and the start of classes. Returning to the pre-2015 academic calendar would solve the problem. Or the University could provide free emergency housing for a few days at the start of the academic year.
Because our funding package is less than that of many of our peer terminal MA programs, our admissions yield is lower than it might otherwise be. Each year, several applicants email to explain that the only component preventing them from accepting our offer was the incomplete funding package. The standard $11,000 tuition scholarship both years, plus up to $13,000 for teaching in the second year, adds up to a benefit/salary of $35,000 at current rates; but tuition for the 30-credit degree will cost $53,040 over two years at AY 2020/21 rates (up from $48,720 at AY 2018/19 rates and $51,000 at AY 2019/20 rates). To catch up to peer institutions, we should offer tuition scholarships of at least $15,000 and consider raising the pay for TFships and TAships.
Other financial considerations impinge on MAs’ academic progress while in the program. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts, many MAs were working part-time on-campus jobs to make ends meet. When campus closed, only some of their established hours could be sustained. While individual campus supervisors have been understanding, the net result is that MAs this year coped with new financial precarity. Several students switched from a full-time enrollment in our program (and community) to a part-time enrollment.
We find that these financial challenges translate into issues of access, equity, and justice in our community. Historically, given our status as a partially-funded program, we have had inconsistent success in attracting AHANA applicants and low-income applicants. Each year, AHANA students and low-income/first-generation students are underrepresented among all applicants.
Attachments (if available)