Grants and Writing Resources for Abilene Christian University

In July 2026 two students in ACU's online Master of Marriage and Family Therapy program were named to the FAHS Minority Fellowship Program, overseen by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The program takes 55 fellows nationally each year from thousands of applicants.

The URCI Festival and Undergraduate Research

Every spring the Office of Undergraduate Research, Creativity and Innovation holds the URCI Festival, with posters, performances and oral presentations in the arts and humanities, the social sciences and STEM. Award winners are recognized each year, and students can nominate a Mentor of the Year. Registration is free, and the festival's archive of programs and winners reaches back to 2009, when it was still called the Research Festival.

The same office funds the work behind the posters. Its URCI grants pay for faculty-mentored research and creative projects, and its travel grants send students to outside conferences, competitions and exhibitions, with the faculty mentor submitting the application. Students who have done original, faculty-guided work can join Undergraduate Scholars, the office's honor society. In November 2025 U.S. News placed ACU in its top 50 for both undergraduate research and undergraduate teaching, one of 26 institutions on both lists.

Honors Theses and National Scholarships

The Honors College offers two designations, and the higher one, Honors Scholar, adds a project seminar and a thesis. Students on its Research and Scholarship track earn activity credits for research, grant applications and fellowships, and honors students can apply for travel grants reserved for them. The college also helps students apply for awards such as the Fulbright and the Rhodes.

Spring 2024 brought ACU a record four national scholarships. Two graduating seniors won Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships, a junior in chemistry joined the Fulbright Canada-Mitacs Globalink Research Internship as ACU's first participant, and a sophomore in biochemistry was named a Goldwater Scholar.

Where Theses Are Published

Brown Library's Digital Commons @ ACU is the university's online repository, with work deposited by campus groups. Doctoral work sits in its own collections: Doctor of Education Dissertations, whose listings run through 2026, plus Doctor of Ministry theses, Doctor of Nursing Practice projects and Occupational Therapy Doctoral capstones. Master's theses are filed by field, among them communication, history, language and literature, marriage and family therapy, psychology, social work and the Graduate School of Theology. Honors College theses have a collection of their own.

Help With Writing

The ACU Writing Center in the Brown Library Learning Commons is free and open to any writer. Its tutors are trained undergraduate and graduate students, and a Language and Literature faculty member directs it. Book an in-person session, or upload a paper to eTutor and get a tutor's comments within 24 hours. The center also posts an ACU thesis template in APA style, an OTD capstone template, and citation guides for styles from APA and Chicago to SBL. Online students at ACU Dallas have a writing center of their own.

If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our Abilene Christian University dissertation and thesis editing and Abilene Christian University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• Crafting Deep-Dive Narratives for Elite Programs
• Formatting Dissertation Front Matter: The Professional Gateway
• The Dissertation Conclusion: Closing the Logical Loop