Grants and Writing Resources for McNeese State University

McNeese's speech and debate team brought five entries to the National Forensic Association championship in Nashville in April 2026 and came home with third place in President's Division III. A senior psychology major reached the semifinals in dramatic interpretation. The finish was the second best in McNeese's NFA history and the team's third NFA team award in a row.

Where Students Present

Undergraduates bring their projects to the McNeese Undergraduate Research Symposium. In March 2025, 38 students were scheduled to present in the Henning SEED Center, on topics from coyote ecology to simulations of chemicals that are nearly impossible to synthesize. The symposium application asks for an oral or poster format, a faculty advisor and an abstract of 200 words or fewer. Projects that needed IRB or IACUC approval list the approval number.

The symposium can be a first step. One biological sciences junior presented tardigrade research there, then at the University of Louisiana System Academic Summit and the 2025 Louisiana Academy of Sciences meeting, and was later scheduled to present at the 16th International Symposium on Tardigrada in Japan in summer 2025 with three McNeese professors.

The McNeese Review

MFA students edit and read for The McNeese Review, a national literary print magazine, and Boudin, its online companion for fiction, poetry and hybrid work. They also read the first rounds of the Boudin Chapbook Contest, which in 2026 pays its winner $1,000 and publishes the manuscript as a special issue. Roxane Gay judged the 2025 final round. Robert Olen Butler judges in 2026.

The MFA in Creative Writing runs three years and 60 credit hours and ends in a book-length creative thesis. Most MFA students hold teaching assistantships with a tuition waiver and a stipend. Every MFA student gets AWP membership, and McNeese pays part of the cost of attending AWP's national conference.

Graduate Funding

Graduate Scholarships pay by the semester and scale with cumulative GPA: $1,250 at 3.75 or higher, $1,000 from 3.50 to 3.74, and $500 from 3.00 to 3.49. Selection weighs academic achievement, leadership and professional experience.

The Graduate Assistantships Policy sets out four kinds of appointment. Research graduate assistants work under a principal investigator; others assist faculty, teach credit courses as instructor of record, or handle administrative work. Assistants receive an exemption from half the tuition portion of their semester bill. In the MA in English, graduate assistants teach entry-level English classes, and the thesis option takes 30 credit hours.

Help With Writing and Theses

The Write to Excellence Center on the first floor of Frazar Memorial Library is free to students, faculty and staff. Tutors work face to face or through asynchronous e-tutoring, on any discipline and any stage from brainstorming to a final draft, including writing for academic publication. Its LitLab helps with difficult class readings. Tutors teach proofreading as a skill and leave the proofreading to the writer.

Master's theses follow the Doré School of Graduate Studies thesis manual, which models each thesis on a journal in the student's field and sets the rest: Times New Roman at 12 points, a 1.5-inch left margin, left-aligned text. After the committee approves, the student emails the thesis to the school for format review. One bound copy goes to Frazar Memorial Library, and the graduate school and library keep the final PDF.

Before a thesis goes to the Doré School for format review, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our McNeese State University dissertation and thesis editing and McNeese State University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write a Persuasive Essay: Building a Compelling Case
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• The Literature Review: Avoiding Intellectual Overwhelm