- Student; On Campus & Online
If there is such a thing as a stereotypical SNHU Master of Fine Arts in writing student, Elizabeth Lawson does not fit the bill. She is 59 and has a husband, a cat, a dog and three sons. She holds a master's degree in botany and a Ph.D. in plant biology, and taught academic and science writing at Ithaca College and Cornell.
One day, while flipping through The Association of Writers and Writing Programs' magazine, The Writer's Chronicle, Elizabeth came across an advertisement for SNHU's low-residency M.F.A. program.
"Something in that ad caught my heart. It said 'Go Write Your Book.' I realized then that I really wanted to do the writing thing completely," she says. "I wanted to bring my book to fruition, but I certainly didn't want to leave my home and my family to do it."
The M.F.A. program at SNHU strikes a unique balance. Students work from home most of the time, communicating with their mentors primarily online; twice a year, everyone journeys to New Hampshire to experience one of the cornerstones of a writer's life -- the residency.
"I love being a distance learning student, and yet going off to these limited residencies and actually meeting the other students and faculty," Elizabeth says. "Plus, New Hampshire is just so beautiful."
SNHU M.F.A. students are as varied as they are passionate. The youngest is 22 and the oldest, Elizabeth, is about to be 60. One student enrolled while living in Vietnam; another currently calls Damascus home. Come graduation, all will have written an entire book.
Elizabeth couldn't be happier about having made space in her life to write the book that she has been conjuring for years.
"It's so lovely," she says. "The program at SNHU has given me exactly the kind of learning environment I was looking for."
