a Certificate of Achievement from the Moscow Art Theater School, which became associated with the school in 1997. Until 2016, students received a Master of Fine Arts. The institute's acting program is an intensive combination of classroom exploration and practical production experience. Acting students follow a two-year sequence carefully designed to help them incrementally increase their knowledge of and facility with text analysis, character development, spontaneity and impulse, period and aesthetic style, and overall expressiveness. Suspension of admissions In January 2017, the institute announced they would not be taking on any new admissions for the next academic year after the United States Department of Education gave the graduate program a failing grade due to the oppressive levels of student debt. In June 2017, the institute's director, Scott Zigler, announced he was taking the job as the dean of the School of Drama at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In July 2017, the graduate-level theater training program announced they would be taking a three-year hiatus of accepting new admissions and they would be working on a strategic plan for the school. In the announcement, Director Zigler said, “What we’re looking at is taking a three-year hiatus so we can come back stronger, better, and with better funding.” Harvard University reported that the median debt for a student graduating from the two-year program in 2016 was approximately $78,000 with an average starting salary of $36,000 a year. Program In July of the first year, students study the Stanislavsky System as a foundation for their graduate acting training. This early training with teachers from the Moscow Art Theatre School focuses on concentration, imagination, observation, relaxation, and action analysis of a text. Classes combine extensive exercises, structured improvisations (also known as études), and textual analysis to help students form a cohesive whole out of their training. The Russian teachers also discuss the artistic and professional ethics of acting, sharing the philosophies of theater that have come to characterize the Russian tradition. In the fall of the first year, students focus on the work of Sanford Meisner and the acting theory developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy known as Practical Aesthetics. This work is designed to help students replace intellectual ideas with impulsive and spontaneous choices engendered by focus on and responsiveness to the actor's partner within an analytic framework. Classes also explore approaches to freeing the students’ creativity