Over its first two decades, the PSP granted undergraduate and graduate credit first through Metropolitan College of University of New Orleans, then through the Haenicke Institute of Western Michigan University. Now, as an LLC, the PSP does not directly grant academic credit.

However, most English departments offer students opportunities to earn credit through directed-reading and independent-study regimes. The PSP will work directly with home-institution professors in conducting and administering independent-study programs.  

Protocols for Directed-Reading and Independent-Study Credit:

  1. Contract with a home-institution professor or instructor to complete the work for one or two courses
  2. Have that professor contact the PSP director (katrovas@aol.com) and supply the following information:
    • Name and title
    • Contact information for department’s undergraduate or graduate coordinator or director (when applicable, the department chair or head)
    • A brief description of the professor’s relation to the student (number of courses, past independent-study regimes, titles of courses)
  3. A copy of the department’s regulations regarding the granting of credit for directed-reading and independent-study coursework
  4. Signed “Pledge” (see below)

Relevant information regarding credit:

Hours:

22.5 hours of workshop

10 hours of readings and symposia

1 hour (minimum) of manuscript conferences

To earn credit, the student will

  1. negotiate, with the PSP director, a reading list of Czech literature in English translation (that reading list must then be approved by the home-institution professor-of-record)
  2. attend all PSP-sponsored events
  3. submit the requisite number of texts for workshop scrutiny
  4. keep a journal regarding the negotiated reading list, and submit it to the PSP director at the end of the program
  5. compose, and submit to the PSP director at the end of the program, a minimum 2,000-word personal essay regarding the Czech-lit. reading list

The PSP director will submit to the professor of record

  1. a detailed statement regarding the student’s classroom performance
  2. a statement regarding the student’s conferences
  3. a copy of the student’s personal essay with critical commentary and a recommended final grade (the final grade, of course, will entirely be the purview of the professor of record)

The Pledge:

 I, ________________________, will attend all PSP classes and events, and will participate in workshop in good faith, which means that I will read and respond thoughtfully to my fellow students’ work, and will submit the required number of my own original texts to the workshop for critical scrutiny.

A note to the professor of record: Fully aware that most departments don’t fancy granting “workshop credit” for such courses that are not taken at the home institution, we advise you to perceive the PSP student experience holistically; that is, though workshops are the core of the PSP academic experience, they are “multi-genre” workshops that seek to explore the boundaries and interplay of genres. In addition, the reading-regime centered on English-language translations of Czech-language masterpieces serves as a comparative-literature component of the independent-study experience. All of the readings and symposia center on craft lectures and/or Q&A.  We advise professors of record to contract with the student for three or four hours of credit, though we may modify the regime such that a student may legitimately earn up to six. If your student is a graduate, we advise that the personal essay be a minimum of 2,500 words; the reading list will be adjusted accordingly.

Please note that all PSP faculty are full, or retired full, professors at respected, accredited institutions of higher learning. Note also that all faculty are extremely well published, and well regarded, as creative writers and academicians.