Course Prefixes and College Teaching

Considering that you generally need a master's and 18 semester hours in a subject to qualify for college teaching, how would a degree like National's MFA in creative writing work for that -- since their creative writing courses are designated as "MCW" and not as "ENG"? Your 4 electives can be in English - ENG. Would a college likely not count the creative writing courses as English courses?

I have seen other MFAs where the creative writing courses were designated ENG -- as English courses. Ole Miss, for instance, does this.

 

I think it depends on the college where you want to teach eventually. I did an online Post-Master's Teaching Certificate at Walden and I have the same issue that you have with the NCU classes. My classes were all education focused, but their prefixes are PSYC. I finished the certificate because it fit my situation the best, but I am not sure how it will play out in terms of qualifying me to teach in another discipline. If I ever got to the point of being able to actually talk to a hiring manager, and the prefix issue came up, I would talk to him/her about the course content. Sometimes, it is an institutional rule about the prefixes, and the HR people can't do anything about it. Other times, it is up to the interpretation of the hiring manager. I will say that one of the schools where I adjunct has me teaching a Gen Ed orientation class. My Master's is in General Psych and credits all have the PSYC prefix.

I think if you are doing an MFA in creative writing and you want to teach English courses, you would qualify. It would be sort of ludicrous for a hiring manager to look at your MFA and say "this person is not qualified to teach writing". The MFA is the terminal degree in writing, so you will be a subject-matter expert once you finish it.

Just my two cents

 

I can't speak for all the regional accrediting bodies, but SACS leaves the justification for qualifications up to the institution. If you use the SACS guidelines (doctorate or masters or 18 hour concentration, depending on the level), then you do not have to do much justifying. Regarding the prefixes, the institution determines how much credence is given to the prefix. The title of the course will often carry much more weight than the prefix.

 

My community college was pretty black and white. To do history you need HIST or something similar. Political Science needs POLS. When I was doing WNMU's program, I showed the the catalog and explained how some of the courses were cross listed. They said it didn't matter. It completely relied on what was on my transcript.

-Matt

 

I wonder how any school could justify not counting writing courses as English. I've never seen a "Writing Department" in a college; writing courses come under the English department -- at least in the colleges I've looked at.

 

I would agree with Michael. I regularly evaluate faculty transcripts (for hire) and student transcripts (for admission) and would find that community college's reliance exclusively on prefixes, as opposed to the title and content of the course, to be pretty silly.

 

I agree, and that's why I was a little surprised when I found this out. With WNMU's interdisciplinary courses, I assumed that some of my HIST courses would count as POLS and POLS courses would count as HIST. But I suppose I have to go with what they say, and fortunately I meet the criteria for both fields now so it isn't a big deal.

-Matt

 

Gee I am wondering the same thing. I want to teach finance and one of the schools I am thinking of for an MBA labels all the business classes with the prefix of BAdm for business administration. The course name includes the word finance....and the specialization at the school says the "MBA with a specialization in Finance".

 

You are correct, Writing comes under English; however, there is more to English than Writing - Literature, for example. I can see where an MFA would be more than adequate to teach Composition but not Early American Literature.

On a different note, I taught Accounting at a local community college with the MBA plus 6 graduate hours in Accounting which I took at a local University. My transcript showed:

MBA Advanced Income Tax
MBA Accounting for Non-Profit Corporations
MBA Advanced Cost Accounting
MBA Advanced Auditing

AC FASB Review
AC GAAP Review

As Dr. Pina noted, SACS doesn't seem to be too concerned with the prefix - the course listing is what is reviewed.

 

But most MFA Creative Writing degrees also require you to take several English lit courses.

 

My daughter, who has a BA in Sociology, is now in nursing school. They are making her take Introductory Statistics. I asked her how she had managed to get a BA in a social science without taking statistics. "Oh, I took statistics. But the course name was 'Research Methods,' and it had a SOC prefix, so they won't count it."

 

It is all about the money!

 

I know that a bunch of courses at USF are cross listed but you get to choose the course prefix that you want when enrolling. This must be done to satisfy the prefixing rules.
It doesn't make much sense to a rational person but to the education system it probably makes a lot of sense.

 

Having also taken both Research Methods and Stats, I can confirm that they are not the same. Stats is a math class.