Grants and Writing Resources for Colorado State University

Two second-year biomedical sciences majors at Colorado State were named Goldwater Scholars in April 2026, among 454 chosen from more than 5,000 applicants. One has centered her research on dengue virus and plans a Ph.D. in microbiology with a focus on virology. The other plans to earn a Ph.D. and a D.V.M. and study how animal diseases progress. CSU tied the Air Force Academy for the most Goldwater Scholars in Colorado this year, and the university has had 19 since 2019.

Presenting Undergraduate Work

Every April the Office for Undergraduate Research and Artistry holds Celebrate Undergraduate Research and Creativity in the Lory Student Center, where more than 500 undergraduates present. Students from any college enter with a 250-word abstract and can bring work at any stage. There are seven categories, among them research posters, ten-minute oral presentations, performing and visual art, film, and written work, presented as a reading of an excerpt followed by questions. Faculty, graduate students, postdocs, staff and community members judge, and campus units, institutes and colleges sponsor the awards.

Students with at least two semesters of mentored research or creative work can earn the Mentored Research and Artistry Distinction. It requires a public presentation or performance and a final report, plus three of four extras, one of which is a submission to a peer-reviewed publication, a conference or a juried exhibit. Completion is noted on the final transcript, and graduates may wear silver cords at commencement.

Honors Funding and Fellowship Advising

Full-time Honors students with a 3.0 GPA can request the Honors Enrichment Award, up to $400 a semester, for conference travel, research, study abroad or the costs of applying for a major scholarship. A student can hold one per academic year, and first-time applicants get priority.

The Honors thesis starts with a proposal in HONR 399 and is finished in HONR 499. It can be a paper, project or performance, but it always includes a written component grounded in research, and the student presents it to the full committee. The program encourages graduates to publish the thesis in Mountain Scholar, CSU's open-access repository.

For national awards, the Office for Scholarship and Fellowship Advising in TILT recruits and advises students and reviews any external award application on request. Some external awards need a CSU nomination. For those, the office sets a campus deadline, and university committees choose the nominees.

Graduate Fellowships and Travel Money

For summer 2026 the Graduate School's Summer Graduate Thesis or Dissertation Completion Fellowship paid $7,500 plus base tuition for one on-campus research credit. Doctoral students and those in other terminal degrees, such as the MFA, apply if they plan to graduate within the next academic year. The application asks for a statement of up to 500 words on the thesis and timeline, a CV and a letter from the advisor or department chair. Ten doctoral students held the fellowship in summer 2025, and the school may not offer it every summer.

The Office of the Vice President for Research picks a yearly class for the VPR Graduate Fellows Program, which gives research funding, travel funding and professional development to support interdisciplinary work. The 2025-26 class has 11 fellows from seven colleges.

The Graduate Student Council funds conference travel. Its travel grant runs four cycles a year, and in 2026-27 each cycle offers ten grants of $500 and six of $250 toward registration, airfare, lodging and meals. Reviewers rank giving a talk above presenting a poster.

Master's and doctoral students present at the Graduate School's GradShow in the Lory Student Center. More than 300 graduate students take part each year. Online and international students are eligible, and each presenter submits an abstract of up to 250 words. Every presenter brings a poster, and at least two judges score it along with a three-minute talk. Visual, written and performing arts entries are welcome, and performers can stage a piece at a set time. Presenters are entered automatically for their college's awards, and the 2026 sponsor awards include a $500 CSU Writes Written Excellence Award.

Writing Prizes and Greyrock Review

The English Department hands out its prizes at a spring reception, held April 20 in 2026. Its Outstanding Literary Essay Awards go to critical and interpretive writing in literary studies, and applicants must be graduate or undergraduate English majors or minors. The Outstanding Writing Awards in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy recognize work in writing studies. Both named graduate and undergraduate winners in 2026. Graduate students can also earn a Graduate Distinction for a final project, portfolio or thesis.

Undergraduate fiction writers, poets and essayists can enter the creative writing program's Creative & Performing Arts Scholarship competition. For 2026-27, awards typically start at $500 in tuition waivers, and special merit prizes range from $1,000 to $5,000. An entry is three to five poems, one short story or one creative nonfiction essay. Entrants must be full-time students working on a first bachelor's degree with a GPA of 2.4 or higher.

A group of undergraduate interns creates and publishes Greyrock Review over a year-long internship. They solicit submissions in the fall and read them over winter break. Spring brings final decisions and production work on the issue. Any current CSU undergraduate can submit fiction, poetry, nonfiction or visual art, and all majors are encouraged. A new submission period opens every fall.

Writing Support and Thesis Submission

The CSU Writing Center gives free consultations and draft feedback to students, faculty and staff. Writers can book a consultation in Eddy Hall, at the Morgan Library satellite or online in real time. Writers who prefer written comments can send a draft to the online response queue.

Graduate students and postdocs who write for publication or degree completion turn to CSU Writes. Its one-day GRAD retreats give five hours or more of writing time, in Morgan Library or on Zoom, and the summer retreats run five days in a row. The program aims them at students finishing a thesis or dissertation. Weekly show up & write. sessions offer hosted writing time of up to two hours, in person or on Teams.

Under the Graduate School's statement of responsibilities, the student carries primary responsibility for the content, quality and format of the thesis, and the advisor and committee approve the final document. Graduate School staff give each student one preliminary formatting review of the PDF. Committee members sign the GS30 form in RAMWeb, and the final version goes through the CSU Libraries ETD site to ProQuest. Once the Graduate School approves it, the document is locked. Approved work is posted in Mountain Scholar, which holds CSU theses and dissertations from 1890 to the present.

Students who want a second reader for grammar, consistency and format before submitting a CSU thesis, dissertation or course paper can send it to our editors. See our Colorado State University dissertation and thesis editing and Colorado State University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Secret to Better Grades: Starting Your Writing Process Early
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• The Literature Review: Avoiding Intellectual Overwhelm