Grants and Writing Resources for American University
A record 16 AU students and alumni won Fulbright U.S. Student grants for 2025-26, most of them to teach English abroad as English Teaching Assistants. The State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs named American University a top producer of Fulbright students, the tenth time since 2012. AU has produced 284 Fulbrighters since its first in 1949.
Undergraduate Research Funding
The Summer Scholars and Artists Program funds eight weeks of full-time research or creative work over the summer. The 2025 round was open to rising juniors and seniors with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Each scholar worked with a faculty mentor, who received a $500 stipend, and presented the results at a fall research symposium.
During the academic year, full-time undergraduates can request Rolling Undergraduate Research Support from the Provost's Office for research materials, software, books, poster printing, small payments to interview subjects with IRB approval, and travel to conferences in their discipline. Students who are presenting get preference for conference money. College of Arts and Sciences students who are presenting a paper can apply for up to $400 a year in CAS conference travel funding after first applying to the Provost's fund, and a student can receive money from only one of the two offices.
Where Students Present and Publish
CAS undergraduates and graduate students show original research, scholarship and creative work at the Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference.
At the Washington College of Law, students run the American University Law Review. Founded in 1952, it is the school's oldest and largest student-run publication and puts out six issues a year, one of them devoted to Federal Circuit decisions.
Clocks and Clouds is an AU undergraduate research journal for articles in political science, international relations and public policy. It takes papers through a submission form on its site, and its latest edition is the 2025-2026 issue.
Fellowships and Graduate Awards
The Career Center's Office of Merit Awards advises candidates for the Boren Graduate Fellowship and Boren Undergraduate Scholarship, Fulbright teaching, research and study grants, the Gilman, Rangel, Pickering and Payne fellowships, and the Voyager Scholarship. Advisers hold drop-in sessions and writing workshops.
Master's and doctoral students can compete for the Adel Ait-Ghezala Graduate Research Fellowship, which backs applied, educational or policy research meant to improve the lives of citizens of developing countries. Awards go toward the next year's tuition. Doctoral students who are university employees can also request up to $500 in matching funds for professional development tied to their program, matched against money from their teaching or academic unit.
Writing Help and Thesis Submission
The Writing Center is part of the Eagle Learning Center, which also offers academic coaching, supplemental instruction and a Quantitative Support Lab. Its services are free. The Writing Center works with all currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students in 45-minute consultations, held online or in Butler 310 and booked through WC Online. Graduate consultants drawn from many academic fields help students adjust to graduate-level coursework and give sustained feedback on larger projects.
A thesis or dissertation starts with an approved proposal, and human-subjects research needs IRB approval before it begins. Writers then format the document to the AU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation guide, using the Word or LaTeX templates, and upload it so the school's ETD administrator can review the format before the final upload. The submission and style guide notes that ProQuest publishes the PDF exactly as received, so writers should check the file against the original document before it goes in.
Every AU thesis and dissertation has been submitted electronically since 2011. The AU Library makes them available online in the AU Research Archive (AURA) and through ProQuest, which requires AU credentials. As of 2022, Archives and Special Collections had digitized every pre-2011 thesis and dissertation it holds.
Our editors can give an AU seminar paper, master's thesis or dissertation a final edit for grammar, consistency and format before it reaches your school's ETD administrator. See our American University dissertation and thesis editing and American University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with American University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your AU writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.