Grants and Writing Resources for Simon Fraser University
SFU sent a team to the National Geomatics Competition for the first time in 2026, and the three students on it won it. Sixteen teams competed at McMaster University over the reading break. The SFU entry was a geospatial model for park-and-ride planning, built from suitability maps, transit analysis on an OpenStreetMap routing engine and data-driven case studies. The Department of Geography reported the result in March 2026.
Summer Research Awards
SFU's Undergraduate Student Research Awards fund 16 weeks of research under a university professor's supervision. In the 2026 competition the VPRI Social Science and Humanities USRA carried a $6,000 award portion for full-time work at 35 hours a week, or $3,000 for 17.5 hours a week. A faculty supplement is added, and the combined pay is at least minimum wage. Domestic and international students in an SFU bachelor's program can apply after two terms of study with a GPA of 2.67 or higher.
The student and supervisor apply together. A second stream, the CIHR and SSHRC USRA, is currently reserved for Black student researchers who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents and is full-time only, with the same $6,000 award portion.
Student Journals
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences keeps a list of undergraduate journals. Gadfly publishes undergraduate research in political science. Polis comes out of the Sociology and Anthropology Student Union, and Confluence, from International Studies, takes open-access work by undergraduate and graduate students. The Lyre prints fiction, essays, poetry, plays, translations and visual art, with priority for undergraduates.
In February 2025 the School of Criminology announced the SFU Student Journal of Criminology. A master's student and a doctoral student serve as co-chief editors, and the journal plans to publish once or twice a year depending on how many papers come in.
Graduate Funding and Thesis Prizes
Graduate Studies lists awards by department, and the English page shows the university-funded awards open to students in many programs. A Graduate Fellowship is held within a student's first 9 terms of a master's or 15 of a PhD. The Graduate Travel and Research Award supports the travel and research a degree requires, and its value depends on the expenses a student submits. The President's PhD Scholarship is a one-term award for doctoral students making excellent progress with fewer than 12 terms completed. The fellowship and the travel award both require a CGPA of at least 3.00.
Late-stage doctoral students can seek the $7,000 Thesis Completion Fellowship in their 16th to 24th term. Students apply or are nominated with a completion plan and a supervisor's reference, and some departments don't offer it. Finished theses compete by nomination: the Senate Graduate Awards Adjudication Committee forwards two candidates to the national CAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards, which carry a $1,500 prize, and picks the two Governor General Gold Medal winners.
Writing Consultations
The SFU Library's Student Learning Commons and Research Commons share a booking system. Undergraduates meet the undergraduate writing team in person or online. Graduate students book a separate graduate writing team and can request Read Ahead feedback on a draft.
Proofreaders and Thesis Submission
SFU allows a proofreader on a thesis, under conditions set out on the Graduate Studies doctoral thesis and master's thesis pages. The student needs written approval from the academic supervisor and must acknowledge the proofreader in the thesis. Proofreading covers errors in spelling, grammar, sentence construction, referencing and punctuation, and it may point out unclear passages. The proofreader tracks changes and uses comment boxes in electronic files. Supervisors are expected to give discipline-appropriate editorial comments, and generative or agentic AI tools need the supervisor's prior approval and a disclosure in the Acknowledgements and/or Methods sections.
The Library provides thesis templates and sets submission deadlines, and theses go in through an online registration system. Every thesis that meets SFU degree requirements is subject to open publication in the Library repository. A student who needs to postpone publication, for reasons such as safety risks, patentable material or a publisher's restriction, sends the request to Graduate Studies at least 30 days before the defence.
With a supervisor's written approval, our editors can proofread an SFU thesis for spelling, grammar, punctuation and referencing, with every change tracked and every query left in a comment box. See our Simon Fraser University dissertation and thesis editing and Simon Fraser University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with Simon Fraser University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your SFU writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.