Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Windsor
A biology PhD candidate studying breast cancers that occur after childbirth beat 16 other graduate students to win UWindsor's 2026 Three Minute Thesis competition in April, then placed second at the Ontario final hosted by Brock University. She represents UWindsor at the national 3MT competition in Regina on November 4. At the Fall 2026 convocation, a kinesiology PhD graduate whose research produced a public guide to accessible gyms receives the Governor General's Gold Medal in Graduate Studies.
Where Students Present
UWill Discover runs all year and is open to UWindsor students in every discipline. Students sign up through a Brightspace course, take workshops on research, academic writing and poster design, and then give a talk, a poster or a creative project at the UWill Discover Conference. Medals with cash prizes go out by faculty and category. In 2026 a gold medal paid $250, with silver at $125 and bronze at $75.
Strong conference work can become an article. The UWill Discover Journal launched in 2023 by inviting award winners and plenary speakers to expand their talks into full papers. Its guidelines ask for 2,500 to 4,000 words.
Graduate students get three minutes and one slide in the Three Minute Thesis, speaking in plain prose to listeners outside the field. First place paid $1,000 in 2025 and 2026 and came with a trip to the Ontario provincial final, travel covered. Second place paid $500.
Paid Research for Undergraduates
Outstanding Scholars recruits from every undergraduate faculty. First-year candidates explore research and prepare an application to the full program. Full scholars then complete six paid research placements in years two to four, working with faculty leaders who include Canada Research Chairs, and show their results at conference-style poster sessions.
Graduate Funding and Scholarships
Research-based programs recommend incoming students for graduate entrance scholarships. The Doctoral Entrance Award totals $30,000, paid at $2,500 a term for 12 terms; the Master's Research Entrance Award totals $7,500 over three terms. Holders keep an 80% cumulative average and stay registered full time. Every new full-time PhD student who started in Summer 2025 or later also receives a minimum funding guarantee, set at $43,363.80 over a maximum of 12 terms in most programs.
The Ontario Graduate Scholarship is open to master's and PhD students in all disciplines and pays $5,000 a term, up to $15,000. OGS applicants in science, engineering and some areas of kinesiology and psychology are considered automatically for the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology at the same value. Full-time graduate students presenting research at an academic conference can claim the Conference Travel Support Fund, worth up to $500 for North American or virtual conferences and up to $750 for travel outside North America.
Help With Writing and Theses
The Writing Support Desk offers one-on-one consultations, booked through mySuccess, on interpreting assignment prompts, building arguments, grammar and citation. In October 2026 its page listed those services as temporarily unavailable. The desk's video tutorials remain online, with lessons on APA 7th, MLA 9th and Chicago citation and a lesson on how a literature review differs from an annotated bibliography. UWill Discover also holds an annual writing retreat where students can work on research questions and manuscripts.
Theses and dissertations pass a pre-defence format check by the graduate studies thesis office. Students email the formatted PDF and the format checklist at least two weeks before a master's defence, or four weeks before a doctoral one, and fix every formatting problem before approval. After the defence the final PDF goes through the deposit steps into Scholarship@UWindsor, where it becomes open access after six to eight weeks of processing. The repository's thesis and dissertation database holds full-text PhD dissertations and master's theses from 1954 on.
Our editors give theses, major papers and course essays a final edit for grammar and consistency, and can bring a thesis in line with the Faculty of Graduate Studies format requirements ahead of its format check. See our University of Windsor dissertation and thesis editing and University of Windsor 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 Windsor, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your UWindsor writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.