Harvey Hix, then Director of the University of Wyoming's MFA Program in Creative Writing, visited Ucross in 2006, to explore ideas of a collaboration. In 2007, a pilot program began, in which one new MFA graduate would be invited to Ucross for a one-month residency. The University of Wyoming is the only four-year university in the state and the partnership is intended to enhance the MFA program's reach and to provide support and encouragement to an emerging writer at the very beginning of his or her career. The recipients of the UW-MFA/Ucross Residency Award have been fiction writer Sarah Norek (2007), nonfiction writer Alan Barstow (2008) and fiction writer Meagan Ciesla (2009).