Grants and Writing Resources for Concordia University Irvine

Twenty-five Concordia undergraduates entered the 2026 President's Academic Showcase, writing research papers and presenting posters on March 24. The Concordia Courier reported in its April 24 issue that first place in the upper-division tier went to a kinesiology junior's study of gastrointestinal dysfunction and psychological health in Parkinson's patients, and second place to a business administration junior's paper on the decline of civil discourse. The same month brought the 27th volume of The Aerie, where student editors and a student graphic designer paired each artwork with a literary piece and arranged the issue from sunrise to sunset.

Research Papers and Summer Labs

The President's Academic Showcase of Undergraduate Research starts with a paper. Each entrant works one-on-one with a faculty mentor on a topic the student chooses, writes up to 25 pages, and then builds a poster that presents the results in accessible language. Upperclass students compete in Tier One, first- and second-year students in Tier Two. A faculty panel drawn from many departments does the judging, and five finalists give 20-minute talks. The showcase page lists more than $5,000 in prizes, with $1,500 for first place in Tier One. The project can count for up to three units of credit through an Individualized Study form, and winners may represent Concordia at an intercollegiate undergraduate research conference the following fall.

The Summer Research Institute page describes its 2023 session as an eight-week internship in faculty research, held in labs and in the field. Interns spent about ten hours a week with their group and about ten more on reading and research, and the full cohort met on Wednesdays. Some interns ran independent projects. Credit ranged from one to four units, and the summer closed with a presentation of the projects.

Where Student Work Appears

The Aerie is Concordia's annual journal of creative writing and art, paid for by the Office of the Provost. It accepts drama, short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and songs, plus studio art, graphic design and photography, from students, faculty and staff. Prose and drama run to 1,500 words at most, poems to 40 lines. Every submission states on its title page whether and how generative AI tools were used. Students from the English and Art departments handle each issue from the call for submissions to the final design.

The Concordia Courier is the student-run newspaper and publishes about every two weeks; admissions lists it with The Clearlight yearbook and The Aerie as the three student publications. Students drawn to speech and debate can join Concordia Forensics, the speech and debate team founded in 2007, which placed second at the 2023 NCCFI Championship and third in the 2023 NPDA Sweepstakes. Team members can receive forensics scholarships of up to $8,000 a year, based on need and merit.

Graduate Funding

In 2023 the U.S. Department of Education awarded Concordia $3 million over five years for Vocación, a program for graduate students in the School of Education. Its Future Faculty Fellows scholarship takes $3,000 to $10,000 a year off tuition for M.A. and Ed.D. in Leadership students interested in careers in higher education, and it is aimed at Hispanic and other underserved students. Fellows join a cohort and renew each year with satisfactory progress. The grant also funds the Graduate Resource Center, which gives School of Education students extra writing and success coaching.

Writing Help and Dissertations

The Writing Studio takes any paper from any course and holds synchronous and asynchronous consultations for undergraduate and graduate students. It also teaches course-specific and campus-wide workshops, keeps the Voice Paint blog for writing perspectives from the Concordia community, and gives students, faculty and staff free access to Grammarly. The Academic Coaching Center lists the Studio with Tutoring Services; its writing consultants give one-on-one feedback on claims, evidence, organization, formatting and genre conventions.

In the Ed.D. in Leadership, dissertation work begins at the start of the program and moves through five phases, from the search for a researchable problem to degree completion. Students pick a problem in small faculty-led groups, then write the proposal with their dissertation chair, and the committee stays with each student until the dissertation is done. The Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision combines online coursework with two campus residencies, and its research seminars run alongside the coursework so students can meet a dissertation chair and begin developing the dissertation. The Concordia Digital Repository holds the university's electronic dissertations, theses and capstones.

An Ed.D. dissertation in its last phase, a 25-page showcase paper or a graduate seminar paper can come to our editors for a final edit of grammar, consistency and format. See our Concordia University Irvine dissertation and thesis editing and Concordia University Irvine essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Secret to Better Grades: Starting Your Writing Process Early
• Methodology Chapter Secrets: Building the Architecture of Your Argument
• Managing the Committee: Depersonalizing Critique