Grants and Writing Resources for University of Dayton

At the 2025 Brother Joseph W. Stander Symposium, more than 1,000 University of Dayton students presented 480 projects as posters, talks, performances and capstone highlights. Undergraduate classes don't meet on symposium day, so the whole campus can come and listen.

Honors Theses and Undergraduate Research

Research can start in the first year. The First-Year Research Experience runs across two semesters: a course on research fundamentals, then two six-week rotations in faculty research settings. Honors students go further. The Honors Project is a six-credit independent research or creative project with a faculty mentor, spread over the last two semesters and presented at the Honors Student Symposium during Stander in April; the Patrick F. Palermo Honors Program Founders Fund supports projects involving international research, community service or leadership, or work toward a just society.

Among the signature honors programs, the Berry Summer Thesis Institute gives students housing and a stipend for a summer of research with a faculty mentor after their first or second year, and Global Flyers: Oxford sends up to three honors students to Oxford for six weeks of thesis research. The Institute's work from 2013 on is collected in the Proceedings of the Berry Summer Thesis Institute on eCommons.

Student Journals

Orpheus, a literary and art magazine produced entirely by students, comes out twice a year. First- and second-year writers in courses such as ENG 100 and ASI 110 can submit to Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing, a peer-reviewed journal that also gives the John D. and Rose Marie Groppe Award for Excellence in Writing, the Barbara A. Farrelly Award, and the Father Jack McGrath, S.M., Award for Research in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.

The English department also covers lodging and meals for a limited number of students at its "You Can Write!" creative writing retreat, and the Alumni Association funds free student scholarships to the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop.

Fellowships and Funding

Graduate students who want to spend the third term on a research project can apply for graduate summer fellowships for research and creative activities. The Human Rights Center has offered global summer fellowships and law and graduate summer fellowships with organizations such as the Legal Aid Commission of Ghana, and its Linda C. Majka Fellowship supports a student's human rights research and advocacy with migrants and refugees in Dayton.

In 2025 the Science and Engineering Catalyst Center paired four undergraduate summer fellows with two faculty mentors each, one from the sciences and one from engineering.

Writing Help and Thesis Archive

The Write Place offers free one-on-one sessions of about 30 minutes at any stage of a paper, from narrowing a topic to proofreading, and you can book as often as you like. If you'd rather have written comments, the digital drop-off service usually returns projects within 48 hours.

Master's theses and doctoral dissertations are collected in Graduate Theses and Dissertations on eCommons, with work from 2012 on available through the OhioLINK ETD Center.

For a final edit before submission, our PhD-level editors work with UD students at every level. See our University of Dayton dissertation and thesis editing and University of Dayton essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

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