Grants and Writing Resources for Miami University

In 2026 a Miami Interior Design major received a $30,000 senior scholarship from the Angelo Donghia Foundation, one of 15 the foundation awarded nationally that year. Her library design, called "rippling," borrows its patterns from moving water and uses a copper lattice to spread a rippling light through the space. Another Interior Design major won two gold awards from the Ohio South/Kentucky chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, for a library and an apartment she designed as a sophomore.

Research Money for Undergraduates

Miami's Integrated Learning Office (MILO) runs three funding programs for undergraduate research. The Undergraduate Research Award lets individuals or teams from any major request up to $1,000 for a faculty-mentored project. A student can hold one award per academic year. The money cannot go to paying students, and recipients present their results at the Undergraduate Research Forum.

Undergraduate Summer Scholars is a full-time, 10-week summer program with a $7,000 student fellowship and up to $800 for project costs. Students design the project with a Miami faculty mentor and agree to take no courses, jobs or other fellowships during those weeks. Applicants need to have finished at least their first year and to have a semester of undergraduate study still ahead.

The third program, DUOS, pairs an undergraduate with a doctoral student in a Ph.D.-granting department. The undergraduate is primary author on the proposal. Each project can receive up to $1,000, and up to a quarter of that may go to sharing the results through conference attendance or publication.

Forums, Contests and Library Prizes

The Undergraduate Research Forum runs for a full day in the Shriver Center, with three poster sessions and ten-minute talks. Admission is free and open to the public. University Libraries adds the LAURE, an annual award for undergraduate research built on library resources. Its guide lists prizes of $750, $300 and $200. Entrants send the paper or project, a 150 to 250 word abstract, and a 750 to 1,000 word essay on how they did the research.

Creative writers can enter the Howe Writing Center's contests, open to any Miami undergraduate or graduate student. In spring 2026 the center ran a flash fiction contest and a poetry contest, each with a theme. In the humanities, the Humanities Center offers the Geoffrion Family Fellowship to undergraduates, who shadow faculty and carry out independent research and a public humanities project. Its Altman Graduate Fellowship places a graduate student in the Altman faculty seminar.

Graduate Awards

The Graduate School awards up to 300 Graduate Summer Research Fellowships a year, subject to funds. Students in thesis master's, specialist and doctoral programs who held an assistantship receive $1,500 after two semesters of it or $750 after one, for at least six weeks of full-time summer work on research or other degree activities. The Graduate Student Research Support Award covers unusual research costs, up to $300 for master's students and $600 for doctoral students, once per student.

Alumni gifts fund the Graduate Students' Achievement Award, given at master's and doctoral levels for research or creative work already recognized outside Miami, such as a selective publication or an external grant. At the Graduate Research Forum, Graduate School alumni or faculty judge every talk and poster, and top presenters are named in STEM and non-STEM groups. The abstract has to be written for non-experts, in 500 words or fewer.

Writing Help and Thesis Format

The Howe Writing Center meets writers in King Library, 18 Peabody Hall and the Howe Center for Business Writing in FSB 2045, or online in written or live sessions. Writers can come alone or as a team, at any stage. Graduate students and faculty have separate writing hours.

The Graduate School checks the format of every thesis and dissertation before it goes to the OhioLINK ETD Center. The rules call for one-inch margins, single or 1.5 line spacing, the official front matter templates, and an abstract of no more than 200 words for a thesis or 400 for a dissertation. The PDF also has to meet accessibility requirements. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct, and the Graduate School can refuse a manuscript that misses these. Doctoral candidates are encouraged to have OhioLINK forward the work to ProQuest.

Our editors can check spelling, punctuation, grammar and format before a manuscript goes to the Graduate School for its format review. See our Miami University dissertation and thesis editing and Miami University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• How to Write an Analytical Essay: Analysis vs. Interpretation
• The Literature Review: Avoiding Intellectual Overwhelm