Grants and Writing Resources for Stony Brook University

Students and alumni of Stony Brook's MFA in TV Writing earned six semifinalist placements in the 2026 Austin Film Festival Script Competition, a year after the program took two first-place awards there. In May 2026, 13 Stony Brook graduate students received SUNY GREAT awards of $7,500 each, out of 41 given in the whole SUNY system.

Grants From URECA

The Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities office, URECA, funds faculty-mentored work in every major. For 2026-2027, its Mini-Grants pay up to $500 toward a conference where the student is a co-author of a paper or poster, or up to $300 for materials on an individual project. A faculty letter of support goes with each request. The Jane and Armando Jannelli-URECA Award gives up to $1,000 for a project that joins business and the humanities, supervised by a Stony Brook faculty member.

Summer research runs ten weeks under one central application. For summer 2027, URECA Summer and Explorations in STEM list a $5,000 stipend and the Velay Fellowship lists $5,100. URECA Summer is open to all majors.

Where Student Work Appears

Each spring the URECA Celebration puts more than 200 posters on display. Departments including English, History, Psychology, and Writing and Rhetoric hold concurrent symposia with oral presentations, and Art Department faculty choose work for a URECA Art Show at the Zuccaire Gallery. Students in summer programs such as SUNY SOAR, REU and the Velay Fellowship present at the Summer Symposium, which features more than 100 posters.

History writers can submit to the Stony Brook Undergraduate History Journal, a peer-reviewed publication in the Department of History. It takes essays, interviews and book reviews on a rolling basis and prints a paper edition each fall. Juniors with an interest in law can enter the Scharps Legal Essay Competition, a SUNY-wide contest that URECA administers on campus, with a first-place award of $1,500.

Fellowships and Graduate Awards

The Graduate School's annual awards include three dissertation fellowships of $15,000. The Faculty-Staff Dissertation Fellowship supports candidates whose fieldwork or archival research keeps them away from campus for an extended period. The Mildred and Herbert Weisinger Dissertation Fellowship and the Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship are need-based and go to promising dissertations that might be delayed without financial help; the Board of Trustees fellowship is given to five students.

Humanities and social sciences candidates have two more. The Joyce Turner Dissertation Fellowship provides $10,000 for dissertation research on race, class, gender, sexuality or ethnicity, and the Alumni Association Doctoral Summer Fellowship gives $5,000 for summer dissertation work. Programs nominate one candidate for each fellowship, with the graduate program director's endorsement.

For national awards, External Fellowships advises undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs and runs the campus nomination process for programs such as the Fulbright, the Goldwater Scholarship and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. At its 2026 reception the Graduate School counted 35 winners holding 39 awards from 11 awarding bodies.

Help With Writing and Theses

The Writing Center, part of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and located in Humanities 1024, holds one-on-one sessions with undergraduate and graduate tutors. Writers bring class papers, personal statements and creative pieces at any stage. Tutors help with brainstorming, organizing and developing a draft, and at advanced stages they talk through grammar and punctuation as concepts.

Master's and doctoral students also have Graduate Writing Support. A Graduate Writing Assistant leads workshops and offers one-on-one review of papers and thesis or dissertation chapters, and the Writers' Boot Camp gives online cohorts set writing time and accountability.

After the defense, theses and dissertations go to the Graduate School through Stony Brook's ProQuest ETD site, following the submission guidelines and templates for PhD, MA, MFA and MS documents. Students may email a PDF for an optional format review before submitting. Once the Graduate School accepts the work, students are encouraged to deposit a copy in Academic Commons, the library's open access repository.

Before a thesis goes to ProQuest or an essay goes to a journal, our editors can give it a final check for grammar, consistency and format. See our Stony Brook University dissertation and thesis services and Stony Brook University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write a Persuasive Essay: Building a Compelling Case
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• ProQuest Readiness: The Final Mechanical Audit