Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

at Northern Arizona University - Flagstaff Campus USA

    Available Emphasis Areas:

• Choral Conducting - Emphasis
• Composition - Emphasis
• Instrumental Conducting - Emphasis
• Instrumental Performance - Emphasis
• Musicology/Ethnomusicology - Emphasis
• Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music - Emphasis
• Suzuki Pedagogy (Violin) - Emphasis
• Theory - Emphasis
• Vocal Performance - Emphasis

You can become a highly qualified teacher in a public school setting, compete for a place in the performing world, or continue your education in a doctoral program. Our graduate program will provide you with a distinctive blend of concepts and applications, allowing you to achieve your professional goals and aspirations.

The MM program offers candidates a wide range of academically rigorous and inspiring courses; high-level solo performing and ensemble opportunities; and personal attention from distinguished faculty. Many graduate students enjoy teaching and conducting opportunities that are rarely offered at the Master's level.

For more than four decades, Northern Arizona University has been developing and refining a distinctive forest management major designed to instill in you an awareness of the complexities inherent in contemporary wildland management and to help you develop as an involved citizen as well as a professional land manager. Our program helps you become well qualified to address the impacts that management decisions and practices have on all resources, including timber, wildlife, range, water, recreation, and scenic beauty.

The Bachelor of Science in Multidisciplinary Engineering provides students learning opportunities in multiple engineering disciplines and complemented by other disciplines across campus. The program supports a customizable curriculum that includes a capstone experience focused on multi- and inter-disciplinary teamwork. Specific combinations of coursework are formulated in several named emphases that provide unique opportunities and inspires students to build their own unique engineering pathways.

The core of the program is a design sequence with loose commonality across most of NAU’s engineering programs.  All students, regardless of emphasis, engage in contextualized engineering design and project management courses. This core is supported by foundational math, computer science, and physics coursework.  The design sequence also becomes the scaffolding for integrating and synthesizing coursework across several disciplines and content areas.

Students who do not select an emphasis area may work with either an advisor or a faculty mentor to select course work in the plan that supports their own personal engineering aspirations and interests. Students who get an MDE degree have many general engineering career opportunities.  This includes areas such as engineering sales, engineering management, engineering communication, or an engineering technician.

Students who select the User Experience emphasis take specialized coursework in psychology and user experience design and testing, by combining core engineering coursework, computer science, and psychology.  User interfaces and human computer interaction is explored in CS coursework while the foundational principles of human perception and engagement is explored in Psychology coursework.  This emphasis is intended to support students interested in becoming UX engineers or product design engineers who focus on usability.

The Geology Program offers a thesis-based, multidisciplinary MS degree in Geology with the objective of educating students for success in the private sector, government employment, or further pursuit of graduate studies.  During the two-year program, students use geological, geobiological, geophysical, geochemical, and numerical-modeling techniques to examine geological problems and develop explanations for the processes that produced them.  Students learn to study what is known about a subject and then identify what is not yet understood.  Based upon observations, they develop testable hypotheses about a poorly understood geological  process, design a study to test these, and then carry this study out, learning new analytical techniques along the way. They then write this work into a thesis and present and defend their work in a public session.  In many cases, the thesis is then turned into a published journal article.

The Bachelor of Science in Photography combines the science, art, application and practice of creating images digitally or on film through industry-based software, studio lighting and on-location field instruction.
 
Coursework provides students a theoretical and technical sequence of instruction to professionally create, print and display photographic work; work in varied lighting situations; adapt to the environment around them; critically analyze photographic art; develop profitable business and marketing strategies. Field location courses provide on-location opportunities photographing landscapes, wildlife, night skies using high-tech mobile photographic equipment. Studio courses offer opportunities in photographing food, products and portraits with industry standard lighting equipment.
 
Photography graduates will leave this program with an ability to apply the professional standards of photographic communication and find employment in corporate, conceptual and editorial industries

This degree in Applied Indigenous Studies explores issues of concern to indigenous peoples both in the Americas and around the globe. The curriculum grounds students in tribal histories and cultures, governmental policies, sustainable economic development, indigenous entrepreneurship, and contemporary conditions on native lands and reservations.

The Applied Indigenous Studies department also offers four minors to expand students understanding of Indigenous issues: Applied Indigenous Studies, Native American Studies, Indigenous Health Studies and Tribal Public Administration.

The Bachelor of Arts in English prepares graduates for any future that demands proficiency in literature, language, and writing, as well as general excellence in resourceful, well-informed communication. Our graduates recognize the close weave of logical thought and effective expression, strive for more persuasive or more creative uses of English, possess the sense and insight to appreciate the value and quality of literature, have developed their historical and cultural imaginations by studying the marks of other times and diverse peoples in language and text, and recognize the global contexts of English as well as the social, civic, and environmental responsibilities that come with a liberal education. Our graduates have attained the high-level literacy skills and have practiced the research methods needed to compete in graduate and professional schools and to succeed in the workplace. With our help, they have prepared themselves to become productive, responsible members of the communities in which they live and work.

The Creative Writing Emphasis provides experience and stimulation to advance students’ writing and reading skills, as well as their discipline and habits. We offer techniques to deepen students’ talents, and we demonstrate how to make writing creatively a part of students’ lives and careers.

The Environmental Science program at NAU constructs an interdisciplinary base of knowledge and skills to explore and develop real-world solutions to environmental problems.

Our program provides a firm grounding in the natural and social sciences to ensure all students understand how chemical, physical and biological processes maintain life, and the complex relationships among humans and the environment. Students work together and individually in the classroom, field and laboratory to practice applying the scientific method to address environmental problems and explore creative solutions that apply cutting-edge technologies.

The broad range of emphases available within our program allows students to delve deeper into a specific knowledge base, then work individually and often together in Environmental Science courses to solve problems by applying the perspectives and knowledge they developed in their emphasis with students from other emphasis areas. To culminate the learning in the program, students develop an individually designed research project or internship addressing an environmental issue of importance to them, which in turn, is expected to further prepare students for a range of professional or graduate opportunities.

Applied Statistics Emphasis

• Apply statistical techniques to find innovative ways of understanding environmental problems.
• Explore advanced math, computer programming, bioinformatics, and geographic information systems, and through collaborations with those of other disciplines and viewpoints, apply this information to generate solutions to environmental problems.

The Personalized Learning Bachelor’s degree in Management is built around workplace competencies and prepares students to pursue management careers in a broad spectrum of opportunities in corporate, non-profit, public service or military settings. The curriculum is designed in consultation with business leaders and competencies identified by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs and the Society for Human Resource Management to ensure students a comprehensive and relevant educational experience.
 
PL Management students are provided with the knowledge, skills and abilities to enter the workforce with foundational skills in managing sustainable, ethical and socially responsible organizations. Students explore theories, concepts and practices through current case studies and literature that apply to managing business operations and personnel in the context of a global enterprise. Students analyze and interpret critical knowledge, skills and abilities required for success in managing innovative and traditional organizations. The program focuses on current issues and theory-to-practice exercises to prepare managers for immediate success in the field.
 
Students in the Human Resource emphasis study broadly from program core topics impacting global enterprise including leadership, ethics, finance, managing human capital, communication, supply chain management, marketing, critical thinking, strategic planning, technology and employment law. In addition, HR emphasis students complete coursework that prepares them to apply concepts and principles of job analyses, HR policy, human performance metrics and compensation.

Management Core

• Analyze management principles from a global perspective
• Engage in strategic, critical and innovative thinking
• Examine organizational ethics
• Engage in effective Managerial Communication
• Examine Leadership as it relates to Organizational Management
• Manage financial resources to support the fiscal health and strategic goals of an organization
• Analyze technology management and applications
• Examine the inextricable relationships between operations and the global movement of goods and services-supply chain
• Marketing to a global economy
• Recruit and manage talent as part of a strategic business plan

Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music Emphasis
Students develop collaborative piano skills that prepare them for professional careers as collaborative pianists or for further study at the doctoral level.

• Demonstrate performance proficiency in all areas of collaborative piano work, including: vocal, instrumental, chamber music, opera, choral, and large ensemble.
• Apply knowledge of historical performance practices within vocal, chamber music, and piano repertoires.
• Develop the advanced technical, musical, and artistic skills necessary for professional success as a pianist in ensemble contexts.
• Display communication and rehearsal techniques in collaborative settings in order effectively and efficiently bring ensembles to a professional level of cohesion and artistry.
• Apply professional standards in oral and written communication such as utilizing proper etiquette for phone interviews or video consultation and composing well-designed letters of inquiry regarding job opportunities. Investigate the world of the performance industry in order to discover suitable venues to perform
• Actively participate and network in a community of musicians and cultivate a professional identity through performing with others frequently in recitals and master classes.