Grants and Writing Resources for Azusa Pacific University
On October 1, 2026, APU announced that a student in its Doctor of Nursing Practice program had been awarded a Jonas Scholarship, one of 80 given nationwide to doctoral nursing students in the cohort. Jonas Nursing and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing give the award for two years: $12,000 a year toward tuition, plus mentoring and leadership training. APU students have been named to every Jonas cohort since 2016.
Conference Travel Grants
The Office of Research and Grants sets aside money each year for students who present research. Its Student Conference Travel Grants are open to undergraduate and graduate students whose presentations have been accepted, and they reimburse transportation, meals, lodging and conference registration, up to $400 depending on cost and available funds. A student can receive one grant per academic year, and a faculty mentor completes a section of the request.
Graduate students presenting dissertation research can receive up to $400 in sponsorship and remain eligible for a year after graduating from APU. The office's list of student presentations for 2025-26 ran to 26 entries, at meetings from the Sigma Tau Delta 2026 Convention to the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.
The West Wind and the Oxbridge Books
The West Wind, APU's literary journal, began in 1992 as a zine, after an editor of the student newspaper saw the need for a creative outlet. The English Department sponsors it today. Student editors head separate sections for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and 2D art, and students in any major may submit during two-week submission periods each fall and spring. The 2023-24 edition held more than 40 student works.
Seniors in the Honors College spend a year in the Oxbridge Tutorial, a capstone built around one seminal text or one author's collected works, with shared research and peer editing. The project ends in a published book. The college has self-published these books since 2018, on subjects that range from Dante's Commedia to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and an outside commercial publisher selected two of them. Honors students also receive a $1,000-per-year scholarship.
Writing, Speaking, and Tutoring Center
The Writing, Speaking, and Tutoring Center works with students from undergraduates through doctoral students, on any writing project at any stage, and coaches public speaking and presentations as well. It has offices in Marshburn Library on East Campus, Room 134, and in Segerstrom Science Center on West Campus, Room 170. Students at regional locations can meet online.
Each student may book up to four one-on-one appointments a week. Drop-in visits don't count toward that limit, and coaching and tutoring are free.
Dissertations, Theses and the External Reader Rule
Graduate Student Publications, in the Office of Research and Grants, reviews every dissertation, doctoral project, doctoral capstone and thesis against the APU Style and Format Handbook for Dissertation and Thesis Publications, fourth edition, May 2024. The director emails any required corrections and the student resubmits. Once the manuscript is approved, the office sends the approval to the Registrar for degree posting and delivers the final document to ProQuest. A Canvas course on the process is free and ungraded.
The handbook also sets an editing rule. All APU doctoral programs require students to use an APU-approved external reader or the program's designated editor to edit and proofread the manuscript, and most master's thesis programs require an approved external reader. Where a program has no such requirement, the handbook still recommends an approved external reader for theses. The student pays the reader and should plan on a month or more for the editing; responsibility for spelling and grammar stays with the student.
The library keeps printed copies of APU theses and dissertations. The University Libraries guide to dissertations by APU students explains how to find them in the catalog and in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
APU doctoral and thesis students should first ask their program whether an outside editor can serve as the approved external reader; for course papers, and for manuscripts the program clears, our editors provide a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our Azusa Pacific University dissertation and thesis editing and Azusa Pacific 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 Azusa Pacific University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your APU writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.