The MFA Program in Creative Writing awards the The Catherine and Joan Byrne Poetry Prize each year through the Academy of American Poets to a graduate student in the program. The annual award in the amount of $100 was endowed in perpuity by program graduate Nan Byrne (fiction '01) to honor her mother, Joan Byrne, and her mother’s sister, Catherine.

The Academy of American Poets established the University and College Poetry Prize Program in 1955. At present 180 schools participate. According to the Academy, many of America's most esteemed poets won their first recognition through an Academy Poetry prize, including Mark Doty, Diane Ackerman, Toi Derricotte, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, Heather McHugh, Charles Wright, Gregory Orr, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, and Sylvia Plath.

Winners are announced in American Poet and in addition, when possible the poems are collected in New Voices, an anthology. A few of the schools that participate are: Columbia University, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Miami University, The University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Loyola, Wesleyan, University of Iowa, and The University of Cincinnati.