Grants and Writing Resources for San Diego State University

SDSU's 19th annual Student Symposium, held Feb. 27, 2026, was its largest yet. More than 700 San Diego State students shared their work in over 600 presentations, and 72 students and four faculty mentors split more than $22,000 in awards. One of those presenters went on to win first place at the 2026 CSU-wide Student Research Competition. Any SDSU undergraduate or graduate student, in any college, can present at S3, and the project doesn't have to be finished.

Symposium and Conferences

Any SDSU undergraduate or graduate student, in any college, can present at S3, and the project doesn't have to be finished. Formats include oral talks, posters, exhibits and performances. Presenters are eligible for more than $20,000 in cash prizes. In 2026 the nine President's Award winners and the winner of the President's Award for the Arts were chosen to represent SDSU at the CSU Student Research Competition.

SDSU is also hosting SCCUR 2026, the Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research, which is open to undergraduates in every discipline from any institution. SDSU student presenters can ask for a $90 waiver of the registration fee.

Research Funding

Through the SDSU Undergraduate RSCA Program, known as SURP, faculty mentors propose research, scholarship and creative projects and hire undergraduates to work on them. Students earn $18 an hour, up to $3,600 a term. Those who don't yet have a mentor can apply through SURP-Match.

Graduate students presenting their own work at a conference in the United States can apply to the Graduate Student Travel Fund, an Associated Students award run by the College of Graduate Studies. It reimburses transportation, lodging and registration up to $1,000. Travel to gather material for a thesis or other culminating project also qualifies, as long as the trip isn't to attend a conference.

Fellowships and Graduate Awards

The College of Graduate Studies lists its internal fellowships and awards together. The University Graduate Fellowship pays at least $30,000 a year for two years, with the college funding one year and the faculty mentor matching the other. Master's students in research can be nominated for the $10,000 Master's Research Scholarship. Students advanced to candidacy are eligible for the Completion of Research and Creative Activity (CORE) Fellowship, which funds the research or creative component of a thesis or dissertation.

Master's students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds can apply for the Graduate Equity Fellowship, worth $500 to $2,000 a year depending on need. Students must reapply each year. Upper-division undergraduates and master's students headed for a research doctorate can apply for the Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholarship, which pays for visits to doctoral-granting universities and a funded summer research experience. The Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program pairs doctoral students with CSU faculty mentors and offers optional loans of up to $10,000 a year, with potential forgiveness.

Student Journals

pacificREVIEW, a West Coast arts annual published since 1975, is produced by an editorial cohort of undergraduate and graduate students. The Department of English and Comparative Literature sponsors it as an SDSU Press publication. It began as Pacific Poetry and Fiction Review.

Writing Help and Thesis Publication

The SDSU Writing Center offers free one-to-one sessions with tutors on any kind of academic writing, at any stage of a project. It also runs workshops on different aspects of writing. Students book through the center's online scheduler.

Finished dissertations go through the College of Graduate Studies to Montezuma Publishing, which publishes them once the student pays its fee. From there, SDSU theses and dissertations appear in ProQuest and the library's catalog, and the library's digital repository holds SDSU theses and dissertations mainly from 2010 on. Older print theses are shelved in Love Library.

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 San Diego State University dissertation and thesis editing and San Diego State University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.