Grants and Writing Resources for Alaska Pacific University

Alaska Pacific University's Honors Assembly on April 18, 2025, recognized students in Business Administration, Counseling Psychology, Nursing, Community and Place-Based Education, Liberal Studies, Marine & Environmental Science, and Outdoor Studies. Among the Liberal Studies honors were the Jane Hartman Writing Award, the Turnagain Currents Award, and the award for Outstanding Master of Fine Arts Student.

Help With Writing

APU's Effective Communication Center is part of the university's writing program. It works on papers at any stage, from refining a topic and developing a thesis statement to finding credible sources and revising for organization, grammar, and word choice. Tutoring is usually virtual. You email a draft with the assignment instructions to the center and typically get detailed feedback within three business days, and the same staff help with classroom presentations.

Student Publishing

Turnagain Currents is APU's student-run media outlet, built and edited by students. It carries creative writing, photography, and essays from APU classes alongside campus news and editorials. A print edition comes out once a year, at the end of the school year.

Students in the Creative & Professional Writing BA take a Publication Workshop, where they research publication and placement options and present what they find to their peers.

Research in the Sciences

Undergraduates in Marine & Environmental Sciences work in field and laboratory settings on Alaskan environmental problems, and the program is home to the Fisheries, Aquatic Science, & Technology (FAST) Laboratory. In 2024 NASA awarded APU about $5 million through its MIRO program to build a Microplastics Research and Education Center that will offer Marine and Environmental Sciences students internships, tuition stipends, and funded research projects. Some of that work is with NASA scientists, researchers at other Alaskan institutions, and the University of Michigan.

Where Theses Are Kept

The MS in Environmental Science is a 48-credit research program that culminates in a research thesis with potential for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The low-residency MFA in Creative Writing asks for a thesis of at least 100 pages of prose or 48 pages of poetry, an annotated bibliography of at least 40 works, and a thesis essay of at least 20 pages.

APU shares the Consortium Library with the University of Alaska Anchorage. Its archives note that APU master's theses submitted electronically are available through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, and the library holds one copy of most hard-copy APU theses at the Access Services desk on its first floor.

When a paper, thesis, or dissertation is ready for a final edit, our editors can help. See our Alaska Pacific University dissertation and thesis editing and Alaska Pacific University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Secret to Better Grades: Starting Your Writing Process Early
• The Annotated Bibliography: A Blueprint for Academic Success
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis