The requirements, reviews, and curriculum for CCA's MFA in Comics program are designed such that graduating students successfully achieve the following program learning outcomes:

Students will utilize text, image, and the visual vocabulary of comics to create engaging narratives and/or non-narrative representations of emotions and abstract ideas through image-to-image and text-to-image relationships.

Students will demonstrate the ability to analyze, interpret, and explain their own comics work and effectively apply discoveries gained through personal reflection, faculty mentoring, and peer critique to their thesis projects and artistic process.

Students will articulate a deep understanding of the comics medium, its history and conventions, and various multi-disciplinary written and visual art techniques that inform the discipline while also discussing the relationship of these topics to their own comics and art practice.

Through the mentoring process and exposure to career models and issues in professional ethics and conduct, students will articulate their own career goals and develop a plan for both short-term and long-term success.

Students will develop story outlines, plots, and scripts for a long-form comics project and apply a critical eye to the writing process in order to create production-ready manuscript drafts as well as produce artist statements exploring the evolution of their comics work.

Students will demonstrate the ability to draw from multiple fields of study or to define new fields, expanding and bridging disciplines, transgressing boundaries as they incorporate a multitude of artistic influences and techniques into their own comics work.