Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Alabama at Birmingham
In April 2026 the UAB College of Arts and Sciences announced its 2026 Dean's Awards, picked from nominees in all 19 of the college's departments. Three of the graduate honorees are doctoral students, in chemistry, physics and medical/clinical psychology. The physicist's nominator pointed to her goal of building greenhouse gas conversion systems; the psychologist's nominator called the student a remarkable clinical researcher.
Expos, Travel Grants and Summer Fellows
UAB holds an Undergraduate Research Expo in the fall, spring and summer. Students give posters or oral talks, in person or online, and an abstract submission doubles as registration. The spring Expo adds Video Research Awards: $1,000 for first place and $500 each for second and third.
Full-time undergraduates in any major can ask for up to $300 through the Undergraduate Matching Travel Grants Program to present at a conference or competition. A department, principal investigator or research group has to match the grant. Work already shown at an Expo gets preference.
In the Honors College, the Presidential Honors Fellowship funds 10 weeks of research with a UAB faculty mentor. Fellows in the 2026 cohort put in at least 20 hours a week, in fields from the humanities to STEM, and presented at the UAB Summer Expo.
Publishing in Inquiro
Founded in 2007, Inquiro is UAB's student-run annual journal of undergraduate research. It takes work from any discipline and keeps a section for null and nonsignificant results. Student editors take authors through a submission and editing process modeled on a scientific journal's. Past volumes, the latest from 2024, are posted on UAB Digital Commons.
Graduate Awards
The Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies goes to master's and doctoral students and carries a $1,000 scholarship. Someone else has to make the nomination, such as a program director or instructor. The packet holds a CV and one or two letters, and the Graduate School dean chooses the winners. Research output, creative work, mentoring and service all count.
Students who write an outside fellowship proposal get something back from the Graduate School. Its Individual Fellowship Incentive Program pays $500 for a first submission that a mentor has reviewed. If a funded award other than an NSF fellowship pays more than half of the program's base stipend but less than the full amount, the Graduate School raises it to the base stipend plus $1,500 a year. For conference trips, Graduate Student Government reimburses travel expenses.
Writing Help and the Editing Rule
The University Writing Center works with UAB students on any kind of writing, at any stage. Sessions run 25 or 50 minutes in Sterne Library 175 or online, and students can also upload a draft for written feedback. The limit is two sessions a week.
The Graduate School places responsibility for editing a thesis or dissertation on the student and the department. Its page on having your work edited tells students to ask their committee how editing should be handled, since some committees prefer a professional editor and some departments keep a list of editors they have approved. Students should settle the level of editing, time and cost with the committee and the editor. Unless they agree otherwise, the editor checks spelling, grammar and punctuation, UAB format, heading styles, page numbers in the table of contents and lists, citations against the reference list, and consistent terms and abbreviations, using a style guide the student supplies.
The Graduate School's theses and dissertations page links the format manual and optional templates. Finished documents go to ProQuest and are published electronically through the UAB libraries, in the All ETDs from UAB collection.
If your committee and department leave the choice of editor to you, our editors can give a thesis or dissertation a final edit for grammar, consistency and UAB format. See our University of Alabama at Birmingham dissertation and thesis editing and University of Alabama at Birmingham 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 the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your UAB writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.