Grants and Writing Resources for Georgia State University
The Southeastern Universities Research Association gave four Graduate Awards in 2026 to new doctoral students at its member universities, and two went to Georgia State: a doctoral student in computer science and one in mathematics and statistics, each with $5,000 for professional development. Georgia State also reported in October that a master of public administration candidate had been named College Student Winner by the North American chapter of the Global Sustainability Awards for Wear It Forward. The project lends donated caps, gowns and stoles to graduates facing financial hardship, and it supported 48 graduates at the May 2026 commencement.
Conference Days for Undergraduates
The Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference began in 2007 as a half-day event run with the Honors College, with about 100 student presentations. It now runs a full day of concurrent sessions and more than 250 presentations, and starting in 2026 the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry hosts it. Students from every discipline give talks and posters or present artistic displays, musical performances and film. At the awards ceremony, places are awarded in each category, and Provost Awards are presented as well.
Summer researchers present in August. The seventh Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium ran on August 6 and 7, 2026, with posters and oral talks from programs such as Brains & Behavior, LSAMP and the Beckman Scholars. Each day ended with awards, including separate ones for novice and experienced researchers.
Honors Theses and Research Money
An Honors Thesis is carried out with a faculty mentor. Fourteen departments, English, History and Psychology among them, publish discipline-specific guidelines; the rest follow the Honors College's general ones. A student who meets the Advanced Honors requirements and completes a thesis earns the Research Laureate.
Thesis research can be funded through an Honors College Student Research Funding Proposal, awarded on the condition of an accepted thesis proposal. The budget can include supplies, conference registration, travel and lodging. Recipients report back when the thesis is done, in a written narrative for the Honors College or a talk at a Research Essentials or Lunch and Learn workshop.
Majors in biology, chemistry, neuroscience and biomedical sciences with a GPA of 3.5 or higher can apply to the Beckman Scholars Program, funded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation and renewed at Georgia State in 2024. A scholar receives $21,000 over 15 months for part-time research during one academic year and full-time research over two summers, and the faculty mentor gets $5,000 for the scholar's expenses. Scholars write an honors thesis and present at the conference.
Graduate Funding and Fellowship Advice
Each college offers a limited number of teaching, research and laboratory assistantships, with stipends and tuition waivers for up to 20 hours of service a week, according to the Graduate School. In English, graduate teaching assistantships pay a $15,000 annual stipend with a full tuition waiver. Assistants teach four classes a year and spend five hours a week as research assistants, editorial assistants or writing tutors. Entering fiction writers in the Creative Writing M.F.A. or Ph.D. are considered for the Paul Bowles Graduate Fellowship and the Virginia Spencer Carr Graduate Fellowship without a separate application.
The Graduate School has a fellowships adviser for national competitions, listed with outside awards on its fellowships page. For 2026 its past recipients list shows three NSF Graduate Research Fellowships and six Southern Regional Education Board fellowships. Students applying for national scholarships can also use the Writing for National Awards Initiative, run by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships with the Writing Studio, where applicants book sessions with the initiative's tutors.
The Writing Studio and the Dissertation
Tutors at the Writing Studio, 25 Park Place, Suite 2420, are doctoral and master's students from the English department, in fields such as rhetoric and composition, literary studies and creative writing. Any Georgia State student, faculty or staff member can book one appointment a day. Undergraduates get 25 minutes and graduate students 55. Under the Studio's policies, tutors discuss ways to improve a piece at any stage of writing. Composing, line-editing and grading fall outside the tutor's role, and the instructor decides the grade.
The Graduate School's writing support includes a four-day Write-In Workshop for completing a thesis, dissertation, prospectus or manuscript, with consultants and subject librarians on hand. Writing S.O.S., offered as GRAD 7999 for one to three credits, is built around weekly writing progress. ESL 7350 teaches academic writing for graduate students.
Finished theses and dissertations are deposited as PDFs in ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University after an accessibility check. The Library's ETD guide walks through metadata, embargo settings and the college contacts who handle each submission. To change a file after deposit, the student emails that contact, who sends the submission back.
Once an honors thesis or a dissertation is ready to deposit, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our Georgia State University dissertation and thesis editing and Georgia State 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 Georgia State University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your Georgia State writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.