MTSU Launches Tennessee’s First MFA in Film and Television, Deepening Murfreesboro’s Creative Economy
Middle Tennessee State University is about to make Murfreesboro the home of something no other public university in the state can claim. This fall, MTSU launches a Master of Fine Arts in Film and Television — the first and only MFA of its kind at a public institution in Tennessee — and in doing so plants a graduate-level anchor in a creative economy that has been booming just up the interstate in Nashville.
The new degree is a 60-credit-hour, three-year, fully on-ground program housed within the Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment. That setting matters. MTSU's media college has spent years building a national reputation for turning out working professionals in recording, broadcast, and production, and the MFA extends that pipeline into the advanced, above-the-line creative roles — producing, directing, screenwriting — where careers are made and stories get greenlit.
For a region that has watched film and television production swell across Middle Tennessee, the timing is deliberate. Studios, streamers, and independent productions have increasingly looked to the state for crews, locations, and talent, and one persistent challenge has been keeping the most ambitious graduates from leaving for Los Angeles, Atlanta, or New York to pursue terminal degrees. A homegrown MFA changes that calculus, giving recent graduates, mid-career professionals, and career-changers a reason to build their futures here rather than elsewhere.
The curriculum is built to be broad and modern. Students will develop advanced skills across narrative and documentary filmmaking, episodic television, and live production, while also working with the technologies reshaping the industry — including virtual production and the ethical integration of artificial intelligence into the creative process. It is a notable acknowledgment that the next generation of storytellers will need to be as fluent in emerging tools as they are in classical craft.
Just as important is the hardware. MFA candidates will have access to a state-of-the-art virtual production XR stage, a live production truck capable of covering broadcast-grade events, a dedicated soundstage, private editing suites, and a deep inventory of professional equipment. For graduate students, that kind of access — the chance to fail, experiment, and polish a thesis project on professional-caliber gear — is often the difference between a degree and a demo reel that opens doors.
The program is designed to serve three kinds of students: recent graduates hungry for advanced training, working professionals ready to step into senior creative roles, and nontraditional students pivoting into film and television from other fields. That mix reflects a workforce truth in the modern creative economy — talent arrives by many paths, and the most valuable training meets each of them where they are.
For Murfreesboro, the MFA is more than a new line in a course catalog. It is a bet that the city can be a place where careers in one of the country's most competitive industries begin — and stay. As MTSU students continue to build hands-on credentials at marquee events, from regional broadcasts to the festival stage, the new graduate program gives the most driven among them a reason to keep their cameras pointed at Tennessee. (For a look at how MTSU students are already gaining real-world media experience, see our coverage of their work at Bonnaroo 2026.)
