Grants and Writing Resources for San José State University

When San José State hosted the 40th CSU Student Research Competition in April 2026, two SJSU graduate students took second place in the graduate engineering and computer science division with a study of how alternating and direct current electrical stimulation affect cell migration. SJSU also took the competition's AI-Enabled Research Award in education.

Research Week

SJSU Research Week runs for a week each April. Students pitch their research in Grad Slam, which was held at the Hammer Theatre Center in 2026. That year's Celebration of Research was set for more than 80 student posters, and the College of Science Student Research Day for up to 100, with the authors standing by to take questions.

Research Funding

The Department of Anthropology's awards and grants list includes the Laura Good Undergraduate Research Grant, up to $500 for a faculty-supervised project by an anthropology or behavioral science major, and the Vecchi Fellowship, up to $500 for work on Native American culture. GRAD Grants give graduate students up to $250 toward research that will become an M.A. thesis or project report, and up to $500 to travel to a conference and present a paper.

The Lurie College of Education announced a student research grant in 2022 that paid $2,000 a semester, or $4,000 a year, to undergraduate, credential and graduate students running a student-initiated project with a faculty mentor. California residents in master's programs can apply for the Graduate Equity Fellowship. Recipients must complete at least six units in both fall and spring.

Prizes and Journals

The English department's scholarship and award list for fall 2020 through fall 2021 includes the James Phelan Awards, given in personal essay, short story and poetry. The Ruth MacLean McGee Scholarship goes to English majors with outstanding work in nonfiction. The James O. Wood Fund for Shakespeare Studies rewards the best Shakespeare project, which can take the form of an essay, a reading, a performance or a piece of visual art. M.A. students in literature compete for the Harvey Birenbaum Prize.

Justice studies students publish Themis, a peer-reviewed annual whose 2026 issue carried 16 articles on forensic science and justice. The McNair Research Journal SJSU prints work by McNair scholars and released Volume 22 in spring 2026. Graduate students lead the double-blind School of Information Student Research Journal, and taxation master's students manage The Contemporary Tax Journal.

Help With Writing and Theses

The Writing Center holds one-on-one and small-group sessions in person and on Zoom. Tutors work on developing ideas, citing sources, organization and sentence-level clarity, and they support multilingual learners and returning students. The center also runs online workshops and posts video tutorials and handouts.

SJSU's master's thesis and doctoral dissertation guidelines (revised March 2017) state that Graduate Studies does not serve as an editor. They suggest the Writing Center or a professional editor, advise students to agree on an editor's cost and scope in writing, and say the office will not answer a hired editor's questions about the guidelines. The guidelines send approved documents to ProQuest and the MLK Library through an online ETD system. SJSU ScholarWorks holds the university's master's theses, master's projects, doctoral projects and dissertations.

If you decide to hire an editor under those guidelines, we can give a finished thesis, dissertation or paper a final check for grammar, consistency and format. See our San José State thesis and dissertation editing and San José State essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write a Personal Essay: Reflection & Growth
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority
• ProQuest Readiness: The Final Mechanical Audit