Grants and Writing Resources for California State University, Northridge

CSUN sent nine students to the 2026 CSU Student Research Competition, and they came back with two first-place finishes in Engineering and Computer Science and two AI-Enabled Research Awards. One of the winners, a senior, took first in the undergraduate division for work on a smart prosthetics senior design project that is building a prosthetic arm.

CSUNposium and the State Competition

The CSUNposium is the university's yearly Student Research and Creative Works Symposium, open to undergraduate and graduate students in every discipline. Presenters pick a 3-minute talk for judges from outside their field, a 10-minute talk with five minutes of judges' questions, or a poster. Judges name outstanding presenters in each session. Cash prizes go only to current students whose data collection is complete.

The CSU Student Research Competition takes finished work only. Applicants send a form and a 3-minute video of the presentation, and a review committee picks the CSUN team. Those selected then submit a one- to two-page narrative with supporting material. CSUN pays their travel and lodging.

Undergraduate Research Funding

CSUN opened its Office of Undergraduate Research in fall 2023. Its Research Supplies Grant pays up to $500 for supplies and equipment on a mentored research, scholarly or creative project, once per academic year. A Travel Scholarship of up to $400 helps first or second authors present a poster or talk at a conference. Both come with required OUR workshops.

SUNRISE is an eight-week paid summer program for advanced students already doing research or creative work. In 2026 it offered ten awards, with students paid $17.50 an hour for up to 20 hours a week. OUR will also review documents within five working days, including conference abstracts, poster drafts, scholarship essays and graduate school essays.

Graduate Awards and Thesis Money

GRAD Services runs the Thesis & Dissertation Support Program, which pays up to $1,200 toward supplies, minor equipment, library searches, performance expenses and travel to a research site. Applicants need a GPA of 3.3 or higher and their committee chair's approval, and recipients present at the CSUNposium. The conference travel award adds up to $500 for students presenting a paper, poster or performance.

Three graduate student awards were offered in 2026. The Association of Retired Faculty Graduate Project/Thesis Memorial Award gave several awards of $2,500 for creative activities required in a master's program. The Nathan O. Freedman Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student paid $3,000 and was announced at Honors Convocation. The $500 Robert H. Schiffman Memorial Award for Outstanding Research Promise was open to master's students in the early stages of a thesis or graduate project. The Graduate Equity Program offers fellowships of $2,000 to $4,000 to economically disadvantaged master's students, with emphasis on groups underrepresented among degree recipients in their fields. Each fellow works with a faculty mentor on a project.

Where Student Writing Appears

Students in the creative writing program produce the Northridge Review, a campus publication since 1962. It takes prose, poetry, drama, art and hybrid texts from any discipline. Wings collects exemplary essays from English 113B, 114B and 115. Students whose essays are chosen are honored with prizes at the Wings Ceremony each fall.

Writing Consultants and Format Review

The University Writing Center in the Learning Resource Center, on the third floor of the University Library, books more than 6,000 appointments a year with undergraduate and graduate writers. Graduate students can schedule 45-minute sessions with faculty writing consultants. For a thesis or project of 12 or more pages, they can send a Word file and get written comments in three to ten business days. Consultants add comments in Word and leave the text unedited. Graduate Drop-In Support Hours give quiet work time with a consultant on hand.

The four-day Thesis Writing Retreat runs in the winter and summer terms, with writing time and workshops on literature reviews, sources and time management. A Graduate Evaluator checks formatting twice in the ETD process, once on a complete preliminary draft and again at final submission. After the final deadline no changes are allowed, including changes to content. CSUN master's theses and doctoral dissertations are collected in ScholarWorks, CSUN's institutional repository.

A thesis that fails the Graduate Evaluator's format review gets a day or two to be fixed in ETD. Our editors can give a thesis, dissertation or course paper its final edit for grammar, consistency and format before it is uploaded. See our CSUN dissertation and thesis editing and CSUN essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write an Expository Essay: Reveal the Proof
• The Results Chapter: Presenting Data with Forensic Clarity
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter