Grants and Writing Resources for East Carolina University
ECU's student robotics team won the overall title at the national student robot competition of the Association of Technology, Management and Applied Engineering, reported in December 2025, after finishing second in 2023 and 2024. Its autonomous robot had to sort colored balls and move around a course inside a 15-by-15-inch footprint. Earlier that year the Pirate Sales Club placed first among 12 universities at the inaugural National Tech-Sales Competition.
Where Students Present
The Graduate School hosts Research and Creative Achievement Week each April. Undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars present research and creative work in a conference-style setting, in fields from biomedical sciences and engineering to the humanities, performing arts and art and design. Awards go to outstanding presentations in categories by discipline.
Graduate students can also enter the Three-Minute Thesis competition, which reached its 13th year in fall 2026. That year's prizes were $1,500 for the Grand Champion, $750 for the first runner-up and $500 for People's Choice, and the champion's travel to the regional round is paid.
Undergraduate Grants and The Lookout
The Office of Undergraduate Research awards Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Awards for faculty-mentored projects. Budgets can buy supplies and materials and pay for student time. Faculty review the applications in four areas: biomedical science, STEM, social science, and arts and humanities. The office reports an average of $71,200 a year in support for mentored undergraduate research.
The English department publishes The Lookout, a journal of undergraduate research and creative activity that takes research papers, essays, creative writing, visual art and design work from every major. Rebel, the literary and arts magazine produced by ECU students, distributes about 2,000 copies each fall.
Graduate Funding and Thesis Awards
Each college can nominate up to two theses and two dissertations for the Graduate School's Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Awards. Categories follow the calls of the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools for theses and the Council of Graduate Schools for dissertations, so they rotate each year. Winners are honored at the Research and Creative Achievement Week ceremony, and the Graduate School helps them prepare nomination packages for those organizations' competitions.
First-year PhD students in three biomedical programs can be appointed to the ECU Basic Biomedical Sciences Research Training Program, an NIH-funded package with a stipend at the NIH rate, in-state tuition and money for supplies and conference travel, renewable for up to two years. The Paul and Margaret Gemperline Scholarship gives supplemental support to international graduate students who hold a full-time assistantship and an out-of-state tuition remission.
Writing Help and Thesis Submission
The University Writing Center in Joyner Library holds one-to-one and small-group consultations for undergraduates and graduate students, face to face or online. Its graduate writing support adds a weekly accountability group of four to nine writers and two eight-week programs for PhD candidates: Jump Starting the Dissertation, for the first two chapters, and Almost Ph(inishe)D, for chapters four and five and revision before the defense. Each semester the Graduate School, Joyner Library and the writing center also run a Thesis-Dissertation Boot Camp built around focused writing time.
Students check their documents against the Graduate School's submission checklist and upload them to Vireo, at least ten days before the last day of classes in the graduation term. The Graduate School reviews each one and sends requested edits by email. ECU theses and dissertations are collected in The ScholarShip, the university's digital archive.
Before an ECU thesis, dissertation or course paper reaches the Graduate School or a professor, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our East Carolina University dissertation and thesis editing and East Carolina 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 East Carolina University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your ECU writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.