Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Illinois Chicago

Eight UIC students from medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dentistry, social work and applied health sciences joined the 2026-27 Chicago cohort of Schweitzer Fellows in August 2026. Each will design and lead a yearlong service project. That same month four UIC doctoral students in STEM fields were named NSF Graduate Research Fellows, which brings three years of support at a $37,000 annual stipend.

Paid Research and the Spring Forum

Undergraduates with demonstrated financial need can earn hourly pay as research assistants through the Chancellor's Undergraduate Research Award. The faculty member applies for the student, and the department or research unit hires the student like any other student employee. Applications are taken on a rolling basis until the money is gone.

Liberal Arts and Sciences majors have LASURI, a scholarship of up to $1,250 a semester for one or two semesters of mentored research. Applicants must be full-time, hold a 2.5 cumulative GPA and have 24 credit hours completed, and the mentor must hold a UIC academic appointment. In the Honors College, up to twenty students each spring receive a $500 Gloria Flaherty Research Scholarship, and a Flaherty Conference Travel Award of up to $500 helps students who are presenting at a conference.

The work comes to the Undergraduate Research Forum. At the April 2026 forum in the Dorin Forum, each student spoke for about seven minutes at a poster and then took questions from judges and visitors. Awards went to the top-scoring presentations in five categories, with a separate Honors College Capstone Innovation Award. Every Honors College senior completes a year-long Capstone Project, which may be research, a theoretical study, a creative work or an applied project.

English Prizes and Graphê

Three of the Department of English undergraduate awards are judged on submissions with no identifying information. The Anne Hopewell Selby Critical Essay Award pays $500 to each of two English majors for a critical essay of up to five double-spaced pages. The Paul Carroll Creative Writing Award, $250, takes poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction from English majors. The UIC Linda Landis Andrews Award, also $250, goes to writing from a professional writing course and is open to majors and minors. A separate $500 Selby award for independent research pays for conference travel, library visits or books.

Undergraduate writing also appears in Graphê, a publication listed with the department's undergraduate pages that takes submissions through its website.

For graduate students, the department's funding and awards page lists the Anne Hopewell Selby Award, judged on a dissertation chapter, and the Gloria Fromm Award in British studies, judged on a writing sample of up to 25 pages. Program for Writers students compete for the Goodnow Award in prose and the Michael Anania Prize in poetry. PhD students could request up to $600 in travel funding in 2025-26, and no more than twice in a graduate career.

Fellowships and Graduate Research Money

The Office of External Fellowships helps undergraduates find and apply for national and international awards such as the Goldwater, Truman, Fulbright and Rhodes. Many require a UIC nomination. The office's recipients list for 2025 names five Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients and a Gates Cambridge finalist.

Unless noted otherwise, Graduate College fellowships carry a $30,000 stipend with a tuition and partial fee waiver, and from AY 2025-26 most new recruitment and retention fellowships rise to $33,000. Programs nominate students for the University Fellowship and the Access to Excellence Fellowship. The same office runs the Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award each autumn, choosing up to one master's thesis and one doctoral dissertation in each of four divisions; thesis winners receive $500 and dissertation winners $1,000.

Research costs have two sources. The Award for Graduate Research runs a fall and a spring competition for awards of about $1,000 to $3,000, covering research travel, a summer research stipend, or materials and supplies; a student may hold one per graduate degree. For travel in fiscal year 2027, the Student Presenter Award pays up to $250 toward transportation, lodging or registration for the primary presenter at a national or international scholarly society meeting.

The Writing Center and the Thesis

The Writing Center in 105 Grant Hall is free for all UIC students. Sessions run in person or online, and drop-in visits last up to 20 minutes. Graduate students can also book a graduate writing specialist or a graduate communication advisor through the center's graduate student support page. Those calendars fill weeks ahead.

Theses and dissertations go to the Graduate College as PDFs through the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation system. Beginning with Spring 2026 graduation, each one must pass an accessibility check, and any use of AI needs documented pre-approval from the thesis committee. The Thesis Manual places proofreading and grammar with the program and calls the advisor the best person to act as primary editor. Publication in UIC INDIGO and ProQuest is required. INDIGO offers immediate open access, a two-year journal hold or a five-year book hold.

Once your advisor has signed off, our editors can give a thesis, dissertation or prize essay a final check for grammar, consistency and format. See our University of Illinois Chicago dissertation and thesis editing and University of Illinois Chicago essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write a Critical Essay: Mastering Academic Critique
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority
• ProQuest Readiness: The Final Mechanical Audit