Grants and Writing Resources for Pepperdine University

A Seaver College student became a Rhodes Scholar in 2025. Seaver College's fellowship recipients list for that year also names a student who won a Fulbright to Bulgaria and another who received a JET fellowship to Japan. The year before, more than 150 students presented 124 interdisciplinary projects at Seaver's 2024 Research and Scholarly Achievement Symposium.

Research Programs and the Symposium

The Seaver College Research and Scholarly Achievement Symposium is held each year through the Office of the Vice Provost. Students show work done with faculty mentors as posters, oral presentations, art exhibitions and musical performances. Each year's program is archived on Pepperdine Digital Commons.

Seaver lists its research programs on the university's student research opportunities page. The Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) covers all disciplines, and the Cross-Disciplinary/Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Program puts students and faculty from different fields together for 12 weeks. During the school year, the Academic Year Undergraduate Research Initiative gives faculty grants for a student's project. The student receives one unit of scholarship support.

Student Journals

Global Tides is Pepperdine's student-led, peer-reviewed journal of undergraduate research, with sections in the humanities, international studies and languages, religion and philosophy, and the social sciences. Volume 20 came out in 2026. The Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research publishes student papers, including research articles, literature reviews, rhetorical analyses and essays.

Graduate students have outlets of their own. The Pepperdine Policy Review publishes public policy scholarship from School of Public Policy students, and the Pepperdine Law Review is edited by law students chosen on scholarship, who write comments and notes as well as editing outside articles. Recent theses and dissertations appear in the Theses and Dissertations collection on Pepperdine Digital Commons.

National Fellowships

Seaver's Graduate Fellowships page walks students through applying for nationally competitive fellowships, starting with choosing the right one. Past winners are listed by year on its recipients page.

Writing and Dissertation Support

At Seaver, the Writing Center helps students turn class papers into final drafts. The Student Success Center offers drop-in tutoring and academic coaching. In the Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP), Writing Support reviews papers and dissertation manuscripts in individual appointments and runs writing seminars and APA workshops each term at the graduate campuses.

GSEP's Dissertation Support office helps students meet methodological and style guidelines and prepare IRB submissions. GSEP holds the annual Waves of Progress Dissertation Writing Retreat on the Malibu campus; in June 2026 it gave 16 doctoral students uninterrupted writing time, personalized writing consultations, dissertation coaching and library consultations. Several had attended earlier retreats.

If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our Pepperdine University dissertation and thesis editing and Pepperdine University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.