Grants and Writing Resources for Vanderbilt University

Three Vanderbilt undergraduates, two juniors and a sophomore, each won 5,000 euros from the Fondation Claude Pichois in April 2026 for research on the poet Charles Baudelaire, built on primary sources in the library's W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. Two more students earned honorable mentions. That same spring, seven students were named 2026 Keegan Traveling Fellows: three graduating seniors who will spend a year abroad on self-designed projects and four rising juniors and seniors with summer fellowships.

Presenting Research

The Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Symposium meets twice a year, in fall and spring, and invites undergraduates from all disciplines to present posters. Its poster competition gives awards to the top submissions in six categories, from engineering to the social and behavioral sciences and humanities.

Students who want a full summer in a lab or the field can apply to the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program. It's 10 weeks of full-time research with any full-time Vanderbilt faculty member as mentor. Writing workshops help participants turn their ideas into research proposals, and no courses may be taken during the program.

Journals and Writing Prizes

The Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal is student-run and interdisciplinary, and it reviews research papers, honors theses and class papers in fields from the natural sciences to the humanities; Vol. 15 appeared in November 2025. For creative work, the English department's campus publications list includes The Vanderbilt Review, the official undergraduate literary and arts journal, and Vanderbilt Lives, an annual collection of undergraduate creative nonfiction. Spitfire Magazine takes prose and poetry from every type of student, and the Vanderbilt Hustler is the student newspaper.

The English department gives several undergraduate awards. The Merrill Moore Award goes to three creative writers each year, one each in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Any enrolled Vanderbilt student may enter for the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize, which carries a cash award and a year's membership in the Academy. Graduating seniors can also receive the Best Undergraduate Honors Thesis Award.

Graduate Research Funding

The Russell G. Hamilton Graduate Leadership Institute's Dissertation Enhancement Grant provides up to $2,000 for research expenses tied to a doctoral dissertation, with preference for Ph.D. candidates. The same page lists the Graduate School Conference Travel Grant, up to $1,000 for students who are first author and presenter of research done at Vanderbilt.

The Graduate School's student awards add named prizes. The Outstanding Graduate Student Award recognizes three dissertation-stage Ph.D. students a year with $500 each. Candidates with an approved dissertation proposal can be considered for the $5,000 Edward Ferguson Jr. Graduate Award for research excellence in any field or the $2,500 Louise A. Taylor Scholarship for the most promising humanities dissertation research, and other awards target fields such as cancer research and East Asian studies.

Dissertation and Writing Support

The Writing Studio offers free one-on-one consultations, in person and online, to any member of Vanderbilt's scholarly community. Graduate students and postdocs can join its weekly writing groups, which open with a 10-minute goal-setting check-in and keep a facilitator in the room. Its Dissertation Writers' Retreats run two days over fall and spring breaks and five days in summer, pairing writing time with optional consultations, a daily workshop and lunch.

Humanities dissertators have another option at the Robert Penn Warren Center. Its eight-week Dissertation Bootcamp asks for 8 to 10 pages a week and pays a $250 stipend to students who finish. Advanced students can follow with 12 Weeks to an Article, a spring group aimed at a journal submission, and the center's Writer's House sets aside afternoons of silent writing after a shared lunch.

Where Theses Are Published

Graduate School theses and dissertations are submitted through VIREO, with a required format review, under the Thesis and Dissertation Guidelines. Finished work goes into the open-access Vanderbilt University Institutional Repository, and Ph.D. students may also deposit with ProQuest at no extra cost. Embargoes of 6, 12 or 24 months are available.

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