Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Massachusetts Amherst
A Commonwealth Honors College junior won a Goldwater Scholarship in May 2026. The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation gives the award each year to a small group of sophomores and juniors headed for research careers in science, engineering and mathematics. Student writers had a good year as well. Jabberwocky, the English department's student-run literary journal, marked its 2026 edition with a launch-party reading, and its administrative team that year drew students from 15 majors in four colleges.
Where Undergraduates Present and Publish
Commonwealth Honors College organizes the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference, which has met at UMass Amherst for more than 30 years. The conference is open to undergraduates from the state's 28 public colleges and universities, with research in more than 60 subject areas. Honors students presenting there can apply for a MassURC Poster Printing Grant, which pays to print the poster at the Digital Media Lab in Du Bois Library.
Jabberwocky takes fiction, nonfiction, poetry and media from any UMass Amherst undergraduate. Student staff of any major choose the pieces in genre teams, and a copyediting team prepares the accepted work. The Scribe, sponsored by the College of Humanities and Fine Arts Student Leadership Group, prints art, photography, writing and music. Its fall edition appears online and its spring edition in print.
Honors Grants and Scholarship Advising
Honors Research/Creative Activity Grants of up to $1,000 pay for materials and activities tied to an honors thesis or another project with a UMass Amherst faculty member. Applicants need a 3.400 GPA. The money goes to the faculty sponsor's department, and recipients present at MassURC.
The college's research funding list adds two more. CHC Conference Travel Grants pay $400 to attend a conference and $750 to present at one. Students enrolled in an Honors Thesis, in any major, can compete for a CHC Finish Strong Honors Thesis Award, a one-time $2,500 stipend for the costs of finishing the thesis, with one award per school or college.
For Fulbright, Churchill and other national competitions, the Office of National Scholarship Advisement works with students and alumni on recommendations, proposals, personal statements and interviews. It also runs writing workshops for applicants.
Grants for Doctoral and MFA Research
Graduate School grants support a dissertation at several stages. A Predissertation Research Grant of up to $1,500 helps early doctoral students test whether a project is feasible, gather pilot data or build research contacts before the prospectus. Dissertation Fieldwork Grants cover data collection that lasts weeks or months, up to $5,000 and in rare cases $8,000. The Armstrong Graduate Student Research Grant, funded by a gift from John and Elizabeth Armstrong, can reach $25,000 for dissertation research in any field, though most awards are smaller. MFA students can apply for an MFA Thesis Grant of up to $2,000 for materials, research and travel.
The Graduate School's funding page reports 25 Armstrong grants worth about $300,000 in 2025-26, and 32 doctoral students that year received a Dissertation Completion Fellowship, about $250,000 in all.
Writing Support and the ScholarWorks Deposit
The Writing Center in the Du Bois Library Learning Commons offers free 45-minute sessions in person or online to students, faculty and staff. Its tutors have worked on dissertations, articles, master's theses and grant writing, and graduate students and postdocs can book recurring appointments with one tutor, up to two a week.
Three times a year the Graduate School holds a free dissertation writing retreat. The week opens with a three-hour bootcamp on writing practice and continues with full days of structured writing, lunch included. PhD students drafting chapters get preference.
Dissertations are submitted electronically to ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst and must follow the Graduate School's Guidelines for Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. The library's submission guide explains that the Graduate School reviews each deposit for formatting and sends any revision requests through ScholarWorks.
If a chapter, thesis or seminar paper needs a last pass for grammar, consistency and format before the Graduate School or your professor sees it, our editors can take it on. See our University of Massachusetts Amherst dissertation and thesis editing and University of Massachusetts Amherst 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 Massachusetts Amherst, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your UMass Amherst writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.