Grants and Writing Resources for Gardner-Webb University
In July 2026 Gardner-Webb reported that a Doctor of Business Administration student won the best paper award at the Academy of Business Research, an international society of scholars and practitioners, for a concept plan on artificial intelligence in human resource management. The paper has since been published, and the student's dissertation studies what data centers mean for the economies of the communities that host them.
Life of the Scholar
The Life-of-the-Scholar Multidisciplinary Conference has showcased student research for nearly three decades. The April 2026 program ran from freshwater snail taxonomy to historical propaganda and early Church history, and it paid cash prizes. Best Paper awards were $125, $75 and $50. The People's Choice vote ended in a three-way tie, so each winner took the $125 first prize; one of them was a roundtable by the Ethics Bowl Team.
Undergraduate Research also funds travel to outside meetings such as the NCICU Undergraduate Research Conference. Honors students took posters and podium talks to the Southern Regional Honors Conference in Montgomery, Alabama, in spring 2026.
Summer Fellowships and Honors Theses
The Summer Scholar Fellowship is a five-week, full-time term of about 40 hours a week on a research, creative or service-learning project with a faculty mentor. Fellows receive room and board. Juniors and seniors with at least 60 credit hours in good standing can apply, and the Undergraduate Research Advisory Board reviews each proposal with a mentor's endorsement. Fellows must present, perform or publish the work by the end of the next academic year. Seven fellows took part in 2026, with topics that included psychological evaluations of Nazi officials at Nuremberg and the effect of ibuprofen on roundworm movement.
The University Honors Program requires an approved Undergraduate Honors Thesis, along with 24 hours of Honors courses and 80 hours of community engagement. Theses written since 2016 are posted in the Undergraduate Honors Theses collection.
Where Student Writing Appears
The Broad River Review began in 1968 as One Little Candle and took its current name in 2002. It prints Gardner-Webb undergraduates along with faculty, staff and writers from the region and the country. Two student prizes run through it. The J. Calvin Koonts Poetry Award goes to the senior English major whose group of poems a department committee judges strongest, and the Editors' Prizes in Poetry and Prose are chosen from all student submissions to an issue.
The Journal of Counseling and Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal, invites work from Gardner-Webb students, faculty and alumni; its 2026 issue is Volume 8. In spring 2024 the College of Arts and Sciences gave departmental awards in 11 departments, with English prizes for poetry writing and professional writing.
Graduate Funding and Dissertations
Graduate students in English or English Education who present at professional conferences can ask the department chair about the Gravett-Johnson Professional Travel Endowment Fund. The same page notes that assistantships are awarded on a limited basis.
The Gayle Bolt Price School of Graduate Studies oversees the DBA, the Doctor of Ministry, three EdD tracks and the DNP. In 2023 it held its first doctoral project and dissertation retreat at the Charlotte Center, where 50 students in the final phase heard sessions on scholarly writing, research methods and literature reviews. Finished EdD dissertations and other doctoral work are listed on the repository's theses and dissertations page.
Writing Consultations
Writing help sits in the Learning Resource Center, Room 346. Consultations run 30 minutes, and the staff are undergraduates referred by faculty and trained each year in MLA, APA and Turabian. The LRC sends dissertation writers to their program director.
When a dissertation, DNP project or course paper is close to final, our editors can check it for grammar, consistency and format. See our Gardner-Webb University dissertation and thesis editing and Gardner-Webb 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 Gardner-Webb University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your Gardner-Webb writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.