Grants and Writing Resources for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Seven Southern Seminary students working in American church history each received an Edmund Burke Fellowship in 2025, which included a scholarship to attend the Academy of Philosophy & Letters conference at the University of Maryland. Other Southern students publish off campus as well. An MDiv student's book Poison in the Well came out from HarperCollins Christian Publishing in September 2026.

Dissertation Support

The Southern Seminary Writing Center is free for all students. You can upload a draft for a Writing Mentor's feedback or book a one-on-one session online or in person in Norton 114. Its workshops cover topics like book reviews and using the Southern Seminary Manual of Style.

Doctoral writers get their own shelf. The center's Research Doctoral Studies Resources page has a Ph.D. prospectus template, a dissertation and thesis template for Ph.D., DMiss, and ThM students, and sample prospectuses and seminar papers. It also links the form for sending a draft to the Doctoral Style Reader. The style manual is being revised to align with the 18th edition of Chicago, and the center's post What You Need to Know About Chicago 18th edition Updates explains the changes.

Funding and Scholarships

Southern doesn't offer fully funded Ph.D. scholarships. The Doctor of Philosophy page says limited aid may be available for students who meet certain criteria. The doctoral student scholarships page lists the Mae Elizabeth Kaufman and Theresa Coffman Doctoral Scholarship, which pays tuition for eligible full-time doctoral students from the Louisville area. The same page points doctoral researchers to outside programs such as Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad and the Rockefeller Archive Center's research grants.

Women at Boyce College and Southern Seminary can receive the Mary K. Mohler Scholarship. A spring 2026 luncheon welcomed 26 recipients.

Presenting Research

Every Ph.D. student takes four semesters of colloquia during coursework. Southern also brings a large group to the Evangelical Theological Society. At the 2025 meeting in Boston, nearly 40 people from the seminary and Boyce College gave papers and moderated sessions, a recent Ph.D. graduate among them.

Where Theses Are Published

Since spring 2011, Southern has received dissertations and theses only in electronic form, and its ETD page describes each one as openly accessible. Finished work goes into the Boyce Digital Repository, kept by the James P. Boyce Centennial Library, and is listed in the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. Research doctoral students also deposit a bound paper copy.

DMin students write a Ministry Research Project of 100 to 125 pages, and the Doctor of Ministry builds the project through four online Contextualized Writing Seminars. Recent projects appear in the same repository.

Our editors work with Southern Seminary writers at the final-draft stage, from seminar papers to dissertations. See our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dissertation and thesis editing and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.