With its outstanding faculty, diverse courses, small seminar classes, and numerous options for advanced study, the English Graduate Program at Winona State University offers graduate students several programs for pursuing a Master’s degree in English:

• MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH: LITERATURE & LANGUAGE
• MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ENGLISH : Studies in literature, language, and education.
• MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH: TESOL : Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Within these programs, students may choose to write a Master’s thesis or to take the Non-Thesis Option, and students with sufficient coursework in creative writing may opt to write a Creative Thesis, though no MFA is offered. While the three Master’s programs are each designed to be completed in two academic years, a student may opt to follow a more gradual course of completion. Students who do not wish to pursue a degree may take classes as Graduate Special Students.

Despite the wide range of ages, backgrounds, nationalities, and interests among our graduate students, the English Graduate Program has a distinctive cohesiveness. In addition to encouraging a collaborative sensibility, the graduate faculty aims to give personal attention to each graduate student and to furnish them, individually and collectively, with rigorous, stimulating exposure to various literary genres, periods, figures, and topics, as well as to diverse areas of pedagogy, language study, and TESOL.

Our graduates follow many different paths: some continue their studies in Ph.D. programs; some return, with enhanced academic credentials, to the jobs that they maintained during their studies; some get new teaching positions, often ones that involve teaching introductory courses at colleges or universities; and some move into writing, publishing, or specialties such as library science.

Anyone interested in finding out more about the program should contact the Director of Graduate Studies in English, Dr. Douglas Hayes, dhayes@winona.edu. Prospective applicants are encouraged to schedule an informational meeting with the Director and to visit the English Department. Those who wish to learn more about the M.A. in English: TESOL should direct their inquiries to Dr. Ruth Forsythe, rforsythe@winona.edu.