The Oakland University Board of Trustees unanimously passed last week the English department’s proposed Bachelor of Arts program in creative writing.

The March 30 meeting in the Elliott Hall Auditorium was attended by a group of students in support of the proposal. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ronald Sudol, who opposes the program, was present at the beginning of the meeting, but walked out before the proposal was brought before the board.

“I would like to thank our students who have been waiting patiently and very eagerly for this day, which we hope will be a happy outcome,” Susan Hawkins, chair and associate professor of English, said at the beginning of her presentation.

English professor Ed Haworth Hoeppner said creative writing began as a formal discipline at the University of Iowa in the 1930s and has seen an uptick in popularity across the nation in recent years.

“In 2004, there were 80 institutions of higher education who offered a BA or a BFA in creative writing. In the last seven years that number has doubled, so now there are currently 160 programs nationwide who offer undergraduate majors in creative writing,” Hoeppner said. “Oakland’s program would be only the third in the state.”

Hawkins said the program would be ready to launch in the fall “without major expenses or any major outlay in terms of funds.”

The first two tracks would be fiction and poetry. The English department would hope to add television and screenwriting by the second year, but trustees Jacqueline Long and Henry Baskin said the program shouldn’t depend too heavily on Michigan’s film industry in light of the uncertainty of its tax incentive program.

“However, there are corporations who do their own film work, in-house film work, such as Ford,” Baskin, who serves as chair of the board, said. “General Motors is coming online with it. So there is a need for people who are creative, creatively thinking and writing for the medium.”

The proposal will now be sent to the President’s Council, which next meets in June.