Grants and Writing Resources for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
In May 2026 UNC Charlotte reported that a junior had become the university's fifth Goldwater Scholar. He double-majors in computer science and data science, minors in statistics, and was then researching where artificial intelligence meets high-performance computing. That spring he studied abroad in Finland with a focus on fine-tuning large language models. For his capstone project he worked with a Finnish company on an open-source education chatbot for young adults, meant to give safe, reliable results in English, Finnish and Swedish.
Undergraduate Research Grants
The Office of Undergraduate Research runs the Scholarly Undergraduate Research Grant, or SURG, for an independent project in which the student is the primary architect of the research question. Requests may not exceed $3,500, and no more than $2,500 of the budget can go to the student's hourly wages. Applicants need at least 75 credit hours and some earlier mentored research. Recipients present their findings at the Undergraduate Research Conference.
Students whose talk or poster has been accepted at a professional conference can ask the office for travel support. The office pays up to $500 for each student in one year toward transportation, lodging and the lowest eligible registration fee.
Where Students Present and Publish
The 2026 Undergraduate Research Conference marked the event's 14th anniversary and was scheduled for the Popp Martin Student Union. Undergraduates at every level and in every college can submit, with work ranging from class projects to year-long honors theses. The Honors College and the Office of Undergraduate Research also hold the Honors Research Symposium, with oral presentations, posters and roundtables; the 2025 symposium met at the Dubois Center in Center City.
The Honors College's Dean's Prize recognizes outstanding honors inquiry. Honors program directors send nominations, a committee of honors faculty picks the winners, and each of the four 2026 recipients received $500.
Creative work goes to Nova, the student literary-arts magazine. It began in 1970 as Sanskrit and took its current name after students formed a rebranding committee in 2021. Nova publishes artwork, poetry and short stories, and it also takes audio and film.
Graduate Fellowships and Awards
The Graduate School's fellowships, awards and competitions include the Thomas L. Reynolds Graduate Student Research Award, up to $1,500 for continuing master's and doctoral students to cover costs other funding often overlooks. Graduate program directors nominate U.S. citizen and permanent resident doctoral students in STEM for the Lucille P. and Edward C. Giles Dissertation-Year Graduate Fellowship. It pays $25,000 with tuition and fees, health insurance and $1,000 for travel. A student selected to present at a scholarly conference can apply for a $1,500 scholarship when funds are available.
Finished work can compete for the Graduate Dean's Distinguished Dissertation Award or the Outstanding Master's Thesis Award. Students can also enter the Three-Minute Thesis Competition.
Writing Help and Thesis Format
The Writing Resources Center serves student, faculty and staff writers. Consultations take place one to one in Cameron 125, at a satellite in Atkins G34, by video, or through asynchronous e-tutoring. Graduate students and postdocs also have the Graduate & Postdoctoral Writing Center in the Thomas L. Reynolds Center for Graduate Life & Learning. Doctoral writing fellows hold 45-minute sessions in Denny 213 or on Zoom, and the center runs writing groups, workshops and retreats. Its page puts the approach plainly: "Although our consultants will not fix your writing mistakes, they can help you learn to fix them."
Every thesis and dissertation must meet the Graduate School's formatting standards, and the Graduate School offers formatting workshops. The manuals and templates page carries the Manual of General Formatting Requirements, guidelines for three-article dissertations, Word front-matter templates and LaTeX templates. Final documents go to ProQuest and also appear in Niner Commons, the university's institutional repository.
Before a thesis goes to ProQuest or a grant proposal goes to review, our editors can give it a last check for grammar, consistency and format. See our University of North Carolina at Charlotte dissertation and thesis editing and University of North Carolina at Charlotte 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 North Carolina at Charlotte, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your UNC Charlotte writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.