Grants and Writing Resources for Carleton University

A Legal Studies PhD student at Carleton was named a 2025 Trudeau Foundation Scholar, one of 16 chosen from more than 680 applicants across Canada, for research documenting how Indigenous Peoples experience the criminal courts. In the same year three Carleton doctoral students, in legal studies, communication and mathematics, won 2025 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, worth $50,000 a year for three years. Carleton's own 2026 Three Minute Thesis competition paid its $500 top prize to a physics master's student.

Summer Research for Undergraduates

Arts and social sciences majors can design their own summer project through the Carleton University Research Opportunity Program (CUROP). It's a full-time, 16-week internship with a full-time FASS faculty member, paid as a $10,000 stipend over the summer. Five were offered for summer 2026. Applicants need at least second-year standing and an overall GPA of 9.0, and the research idea has to be the student's own.

The faculty also had three Undergraduate Student Research Awards for summer 2026, worth at least $8,624 for 14 weeks or $9,856 for 16 weeks; alongside the NSERC awards, CIHR and SSHRC awards in this stream are open to students who self-identify as Black. Students can also look at I-CUREUS, the Future Learning Lab's paid research program with research scholarships and mentoring.

Poetry Prizes and Creative Writing

The English department's Creative Writing Hub lists two poetry prizes that students apply for. The Lilian I. Found Award for Poetry goes each year to the best unpublished poem of 50 lines or less by a current undergraduate, chosen by an independent judge from Ottawa's poetry community. The George Johnston Poetry Awards give three prizes for students' best unpublished poems, with up to five poems per entry. Students in the BA English Creative Writing concentration can also be considered for the Burton M. Heward and David Whellam's scholarships in creative writing, and the concentration runs workshops at the second-, third- and fourth-year levels.

Graduate Funding and Competitions

Carleton's internal graduate awards include donor-funded awards based on merit, need or research area, valued from several hundred dollars up to $20,000 and applied for through Carleton Central. Students in financial need who are presenting a paper, poster or panel tied to their thesis, major research project or research essay can request the Graduate Research Travel Bursary, which covers part of the trip up to $500.

Graduate students can also test their research in front of an audience. In Carleton's 2026 Three Minute Thesis competition, 10 finalists each had 180 seconds to explain their research, and master's students in physics, psychology and geography and environmental studies took the $500, $300 and $200 prizes.

Writing Help and Thesis Requirements

The Centre for Student Academic Support books one-on-one learning and writing sessions of up to 50 minutes, in person on the fourth floor of MacOdrum Library or online. Its self-paced writing workshops on Brightspace, including Academic Writing Fundamentals and Editing and Proofreading, are open all year.

Graduate students finishing a thesis should start with the thesis requirements page, which links the formatting guidelines, templates and a thesis checklist. Final theses are uploaded electronically, and the supervisor approves the upload before it goes to Graduate Studies. Some disciplines accept a manuscript-based thesis built from published papers or papers awaiting publication.

When your draft is close and you want a careful last read, our editors are available. See our Carleton University dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.