Grants and Writing Resources for Fresno Pacific University

At the Alpha Chi national convention in April 2025, Fresno Pacific's California Zeta chapter took second place and a $2,500 prize in the Trisha Yarbrough Collaborative Research Competition. Five students wrote the team's paper, a study of bibliotherapy and burnout among undergraduates at a liberal arts college, and presented it live to judges, a panel of professors from several disciplines. Forty-eight schools entered. Two more Fresno Pacific students won division awards, one in education for work on creativity in math teaching and one in fine arts for a piece of original fiction, which gave the university three of the 13 awards presented.

Research Nights and Conferences

Fresno Pacific holds a Research Day each spring for students to show their work, and the University Scholars Program adds a Research Night, an evening when scholars present on a topic in their field. At the spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Night, the program ran from a kinesiology study comparing pneumatic and free-weight trap bar deadlifts to a humanities paper on Epicurean philosophy and environmental ethics. A history student spoke on soccer in Latin America.

Scholars also read academic papers to student peers nationwide at conferences of the Association of Core Texts and Courses.

Scholarships and Honor Societies

The Paragon Scholarship is Fresno Pacific's top academic award. It pays full tuition for up to four years, and incoming freshmen who already hold the $19,000 President's Scholarship may apply. Paragon scholars take Perspectives in Leadership and live on campus. The University Scholars Program currently offers nine courses and pairs scholars with faculty mentors; other students can join its classes with a letter from a former professor.

Members of Alpha Chi, Phi Alpha Theta, Kappa Mu Epsilon and Pi Gamma Mu can apply for regional and national scholarships through those societies. At the 2025 Honors Banquet, departments from business to social work named junior and senior honorees, with a highest-honors tier for the top students, and the university named one Outstanding University Scholar.

Seminary and Doctoral Work

At the 2025 Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary Gala, three students received Senior Capstone Paper/Project Awards, one of them in marriage and family therapy. Another marriage and family therapy student took the student category of the Dr. Alvin and Ann Dueck Mental Health & Integration Award, and Zondervan Awards were given in theology and Greek. Incoming seminary students with a GPA of 3.25 or higher qualify for the Seminary Student Academic Fellowship, scaled to unit load, and School of Education graduate students can apply for a School of Education Graduate Grant.

For a doctorate, educators can enroll in the Ed.D. in educational leadership that George Fox University offers in collaboration with Fresno Pacific. The 56-credit program runs as a cohort with two one-week summer residencies in Oregon. Its doctoral core includes a capstone dissertation worth eight credit hours that applies leadership and inquiry to problems of practice.

Writing Tutors and Library Help

Writing tutors at the Academic Support Center, in Marpeck 105 on the main campus, meet with a student as many times as needed at every stage of a paper. Papers of ten pages or more may take several face-to-face sessions. At each regional campus, tutors keep select evening hours and help with organization, clarity and APA formatting. The graduate handbook adds that undergraduate tutors may lack background on an individual thesis, so thesis writers also work with their thesis or project mentor.

Research questions go to librarians through Ask Hiebert Library. The Mennonite Library & Archives, inside Hiebert Library, holds the library's Anabaptist and Mennonite materials and is the official archive of Fresno Pacific. Since fall 2007 the Visiting Writer Series, which honors Louis and Jean Janzen, has brought authors to campus; Kate Baer gave the February 2026 reading.

Before a capstone paper or dissertation goes to a committee, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and APA format. See our Fresno Pacific University dissertation and thesis editing and Fresno Pacific University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

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• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority
• Navigating the IRB: Ethical Oversight as a Structural Requirement