funding for phd thesis writing

Call for Dissertation Grant Proposals AERA Grants Program Seeks Proposals for Dissertation Grants

Deadline: May 30, 2024

With support from the National Science Foundation, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grants Program seeks proposals for Dissertation Grants. The AERA Grants Program provides advanced graduate students with research funding and professional development and training. The program supports highly competitive dissertation research using rigorous quantitative methods to examine large-scale, education-related data. The aim of the program is to advance fundamental knowledge of relevance to STEM education policy, foster significant science using education data, promote equity in STEM, and build research capacity in education and learning. Since 1991, this AERA Program has been vital to both research and training at early career stages.   

The Grants Program encourages the use of major data sets from multiple and diverse sources. It emphasizes the advanced statistical analysis of data sets from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other federal agencies. The program also supports studies using large-scale international data systems (e.g., PISA, PIRLS, or TIMMS) that benefit from U.S. federal government support. In addition, statewide longitudinal administrative data systems (SLDS) enhanced through federal grants are also eligible for consideration. The inclusion of federal or state administrative information that further expands the analytic capacity of the research is permissible. The thrust of the analysis needs to be generalizable to a national, state, or population or a subgroup within the sample that the dataset represents.

The Grants Program is open to field-initiated research and welcomes proposals that:

• develop or benefit from advanced statistical or innovative quantitative methods or measures;
• analyze more than one large-scale national or international federally funded data set, or more than one statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) or incorporate other data enhancements;
• integrate, link, or blend multiple large-scale data sources; or
• undertake replication research of major findings or major studies using large-scale, federally supported or enhanced data.

The Grants Program encourages proposals across the life span and contexts of education and learning of relevance to STEM policy and practice. The research may focus on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to such issues as student achievement in STEM, analysis of STEM education policies, contextual factors in education, educational participation and persistence (pre-kindergarten through graduate school), early childhood education and development, postsecondary education, and the STEM workforce and transitions. Studies that examine issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion across STEM topics and/or for specific racial and ethnic groups, social classes, genders, or persons with disabilities are encouraged.

Applicant Eligibility Dissertation Grants are available for advanced doctoral students and are intended to support the student while analyzing data and writing the doctoral dissertation. Proposals are encouraged from the full range of education research fields and other fields and disciplines engaged in education-related research, including economics, political science, psychology, sociology, demography, statistics, public policy, and psychometrics. Applicants for this one-year, non-renewable award should be advanced doctoral students at the dissertation writing stage, usually the last year of study. Applicants may be U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents enrolled in a doctoral program. Non­U.S. citizens enrolled in a doctoral program at an U.S. institution are also eligible to apply. Underrepresented racial and ethnic minority researchers as well as women, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.

Data Set Eligibility The dissertation research project must include the analysis of large-scale data. The data set can originate from one or multiple sources, including (1) federal data bases, (2) federally supported national studies, (3) international data sets supported by federal funds, or (4) statewide longitudinal administrative data systems (SLDS) enhanced through federal grants. Although the emphasis is on large-scale education data sets and systems, other social science and health-related databases that can advance knowledge about education and learning are eligible for consideration.

Many national data resources, including important longitudinal data sets, have been developed or funded by NCES, NSF, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institutes of Health, or other federal agencies. International datasets such as PISA, PIAAC, TIMMS, and others are supported. If international data sets are used, the study must include U.S. education.

NCES has enhanced and improved SLDS through grants to nearly every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and America Samoa. This federal investment has produced state-level data from pre-K to grade 12, through higher education, and into the workforce. Many SLDS are available for analysis and can be used to address salient issues in education research or linked with other data sets.

Data Set Access The data set(s) of interest must be available for analysis at the time of application. Use of public or restricted-data files is permissible. Prior to receiving funding, students must provide documentation that they have permission to use the data for the research project. In many cases, graduate students will gain access to restricted files through a faculty member or senior scholar.

Data Sharing All data or data-related products produced under the AERA Grants Program must be shared and made available consonant with ethical standards for the conduct of research. Grantees are expected to place article-related data, [1] codebook or coding procedures, algorithms, code, and so forth in an accessible archive at the time of publication. Also, at a reasonable time after completion of the dissertation research, all data or data-related products must be archived at the AERA-ICPSR Data Sharing Repository supported by NSF and located at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. AERA provides guidance to facilitate the data sharing and archiving process.

Dissertation Grant Award

Award Component 1, $27,500 Stipend . AERA will award each grantee up to a $27,500 stipend to study education, teaching, learning, or other education research topics using one or multiple large-scale databases. The funds can be used for research-related expenses such as tuition, living expenses, travel to secure data enclaves or scholarly conferences, books, computer equipment, and other expenses directly related to conducting this research. As part of the proposal, applicants provide a budget that outlines anticipated research-related expenses. AERA encourages cost sharing from universities in the form of tuition assistance, office space, university fees, and other expenses. In accordance with AERA's agreement with NSF, institutions cannot charge overhead or indirect costs to administer the grant funds. In addition to the funding, grantees will be paired with a Governing Board member who will serve as a resource and provide advice and feedback to grantees and monitor grantees’ progress.

Award Component 2, AERA Research Conference. Grantees will participate in an AERA research conference held in Washington, DC. During this 2-day conference grantees will participate in seminar-type sessions on substantive, methodological, and professional issues. Also, they will have the opportunity to network and interact with the Grants Program Governing Board, senior scholars and researchers, other graduate students who use large-scale datasets in their research, and representatives from key federal agencies such as the National Center for Educational Statistics, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. The award will cover all travel and lodging expenses for grantees to participate in the conference.

Award Component 3, AERA Annual Meeting Capstone Research Institute. Each spring AERA holds its Annual Meeting which brings together over 15,000 researchers, scholars, and policy leaders to present their research, share knowledge, and build research capacity through over 2,000 substantive sessions. Grantees will take a data analysis or appropriate methods course while attending the AERA Annual Meeting. The grantees will present their research in an invited poster session along with other graduate students who received dissertation support from AERA and other prestigious fellowship programs. Finally, grantees will participate in a Capstone conference directly after the Annual Meeting that will address issues such as building a research agenda, searching for a faculty appointment, and publishing research. Grantees must include travel and lodging expenses to the Annual Meeting in their budget.

Informational Webinar Applicants are encouraged to watch the informational webinar to learn more about the AERA Grants Program and discuss the application process..

Project Dates AERA is flexible on research project start dates, depending on what is best for the applicant. The earliest date a grant may start is approximately three months following the application deadline. Alternatively, an award start date several months or more after that may be requested.

Funding Restrictions Dissertation Grantees may not accept concurrent grant or fellowship awards from another agency, foundation, institution or the like for the same dissertation project that is funded by the AERA Grants Program. If the awardee is offered more than one major grant or fellowship for the same project for the same time period, in order to accept the AERA Grants Program Dissertation Grant, the other award(s) must be declined. Awardees may accept Research Assistant or Teaching Assistant appointments at their doctoral institutions and may have additional employment.

If the applicant is employed by a contractor of NCES, NSF, other federal agency, state agency, or other entity that provides the dataset proposed for the project, the dissertation research must not be considered part of the applicant's work responsibilities. An additional letter from the applicant's employer is required as part of the application submission, stating that the dissertation project is separate from the applicant's job duties. This letter must be sent electronically by the deadline to [email protected] .

Evaluation Criteria Evaluation criteria include the significance of the research question, the conceptual clarity and potential contribution of the proposal, the relevance to an important STEM education policy issue, the strength of the methodological model and proposed statistical analysis, and the applicant’s relevant research and academic experience. Additionally, the review criteria include the following: What is already known on the issue? How might this project inform STEM education policy? How does the methodology relate specifically to the research question? Does the applicant know the data set? Does the analytic plan fit the question and the data? How does this project promote equity in STEM education and learning? Is the applicant qualified to carry out the proposed study? Reviewers will be members of the AERA Grants Program Governing Board. Due to the large volume of applications received, the AERA Grants Program is unable to provide individual feedback on unfunded proposals.

Reporting Requirements Dissertation Grantees will be required to submit a brief (3-6 pages) progress report midway through the grant period. A final report will be submitted at the end of the grant period. The final report consists of an extended dissertation abstract (3-6 pages), a statement of research dissemination and communication activities and plans (1-3 pages), and the complete approved dissertation. It should be submitted electronically to [email protected] . All reporting requirements and deadlines are outlined in the award letter.

Funding Disbursement Funding will be linked to the approval of the progress report and final report. Grantees will receive one-half of the total award at the beginning of the grant period, one-quarter upon approval of the progress report, and one-quarter upon approval of the final report. Grants are awarded through the grantee’s institution. In accordance with AERA's agreement with NSF, institutions cannot charge overhead or indirect costs to administer the grant funds.

Considerations in the Development of the Proposal Applicants are strongly encouraged to read Estimating Causal Effects: Using Experimental and Observational Designs , by Barbara Schneider, Martin Carnoy, Jeremy Kilpatrick, William H. Schmidt, and Richard J. Shavelson prior to submitting a dissertation grant proposal. Selection bias is a recurring issue during the review process and should be addressed in the proposal.

Applicants should choose research topics that can be supported by the samples and variables contained in the proposed data set(s). Applicants should also be familiar with the User Guides and/or Manuals (e.g., use of design weights and design effects) of the specific data sets. Applicants should be familiar with statistical methods and available computer programs that allow for sophisticated analyses of the selected data.

Applicants should explicitly address the curricular content when it applies. Applicants are encouraged to capitalize on the capacity of large-scale data sets to examine diverse populations, including racial, ethnic, social class, and gender groups. Studies are encouraged that promote or inform diversity, equity, and inclusion for underrepresented population as well as across STEM topics. The proposed topic must have education policy relevance, and the models to be tested must include predictor variables that are manipulable (e.g., course work in mathematics, instructional practices used by teachers, parental involvement). Studies focusing on STEM education policy are strongly encouraged. Studies that model achievement test data should clearly define the achievement construct and identify the kinds of items to be used to operationalize the topic of interest. Also, when planning to use existing sub-scales, the applicant should describe why these sub-scales are appropriate and how they will be applied. Existing sub-scales provided by NCES or other agencies may not be appropriate for the proposed construct.

Dissertation Grant Application Guidelines AERA Grants Program

Application Deadline All applications for the AERA Grants Program must be completed using the AERA online application portal by 11:59pm Pacific time on May 30, 2024 . An applicant may submit only one proposal to the AERA Grants Program for review at any one time. Due to the large volume of applications received, the AERA Program is unable to provide individual feedback on unfunded proposals.

Submission Information Please enter the background information requested in the proposal submission portal. This includes the applicant’s contact and background demographic information. Also, enter the proposal title, amount of funding requested, and the start and end dates of the project.

Dataset(s) used: Name data set(s) used (e.g., ECLS­K, ELS:2002, IPEDS, CCD, AddHealth, SLDS-State, PISA, and so forth). Proposals must include the analysis of at least one large-scale federal, international, or state administrative data system.

Dissertation abstract Enter the abstract of your proposed research project (250 words maximum).

Contribution to the field Briefly describe the potential contributions this research will make to the field of education (250 words maximum). You may cut and paste or type into the text box.

• Statement of how this research advances the current state of knowledge in the field, substantively and/or methodologically
• Theoretical or conceptual framework for the research
• Brief review of relevant research/policy literature
• Research questions, hypotheses to be tested
• Description of methodology including the data set(s) and justification for selecting data file to address research question; any additional or supplemental data sample (e.g., groups used, exclusions to sample, and estimated sample sizes); rationale for variables used; and specification and clarification of variables and analytic techniques
• Data analysis plan and/or statistical model or formulas, appropriately defined
• Brief dissemination plan for this research including proposed conferences to present the findings and potential scholarly journals to publish the research  
• Variables list: A categorized list of the variables from the NCES, NSF, or other data set(s) that will be used in this research project. (2 single-spaced pages maximum)  
• References cited (not part of page limit)  
• Budget . Awards for Dissertation Grants are up to $27,500 for 1­year projects. The budget must include funds to attend the AERA Annual Meeting. The funds can be used for research-related expenses such as tuition, living expenses, travel to secure data enclaves or scholarly conferences, books, computer equipment, and other expenses directly related to conducting this research. AERA encourages cost sharing from universities in the form of tuition assistance, office space, university fees, and other expenses. In accordance with AERA's agreement with NSF, institutions cannot charge overhead or indirect costs to administer the grant funds. There is no specific template for the budget. It may be a simple 2­column format or a more complex spreadsheet. (no page limit)  
• Research and academic employment history
• Relevant graduate courses in statistics and methodology
• Relevant publications and presentations
• Relevant professional affiliations and/or memberships

Please combine items 1-5 as one PDF document and upload on online application.

Letter(s) of support: The letter(s) must be sent separately, by the faculty member. One substantive letter of support is required from the applicant's primary faculty dissertation advisor that includes an indication of the applicant's current progress toward the degree and expected date of completion, and of the student's potential for success in his or her anticipated career path.

If the applicant is from a discipline other than education, a second letter of support from a faculty advisor who has an education research background is also required if the primary faculty advisory does not specialize in education research. Although this second letter should focus mainly on the applicant's qualifications, research experience, and potential, it should also include a brief paragraph on the advisor's own education research experience.

Further Questions Contact George L. Wimberly, Co-Principal Investigator, AERA Grants Program ( [email protected]) or 202-238-3200 if you have questions regarding the application or submission process. NOTE: All awards are contingent upon AERA's receiving continued federal funding.

Visit the AERA Grants Program Website at http://www.aera.net/grantsprogram .

[1] Awardees with access to data under restricted access provisions are expected to archive a detailed specification of the data set so that others can request the same data under the same or similar restricted conditions. 

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External Dissertation Funding

A number of funding opportunities are available from government agencies, foundations, and other independent organizations. Some relevant information is below:

Government Agencies

U.s. department of education: jacob javits fellowship program.

This program provides fellowships to students of superior academic ability—selected on the basis of demonstrated achievement, financial need, and exceptional promise—to undertake study at the doctoral and Master of Fine Arts level in selected fields of arts, humanities, and social sciences. A fellow receives the Javits fellowship annually for up to the lesser of 48 months or the completion of their degree. The fellowship consists of an institutional payment (accepted by the institution of higher education in lieu of all tuition and fees for the fellow) and a stipend (based on the fellow's financial need as determined by the measurements of the Federal Student Assistance Processing System.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. GRFP fellows receive the following: three years of support; $30,000 annual stipend; $10,500 cost-of-education allowance to the institution (anticipated to increase to $12,000 for 2012). Applicants must be United States citizens, nationals, or permanent residents of the United States by the application deadline. Applicants are generally allowed to have completed no more than 12 months of full-time graduate study or its equivalent by the August before the deadline.

NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants

These grants provide funds for items not normally available through the student's university. Additionally, these grants allow doctoral students to undertake significant data-gathering projects and to conduct field research in settings away from their campus that would not otherwise be possible.

Foundations and Corporate Foundations

Axa doctoral fellowships.

The PhD fellowship is a three-year program. Applications are submitted by the Institution NOT the candidate. Each institution can only put forward two candidates for Doctoral Fellowships. Candidates must meet certain nationality eligibility criteria. There in a Columbia University internal proposal and selection process. Projects must fit into any one of AXA’s specified research themes, but AXA will accept applications coming from any discipline, including but not limited to: Earth Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Social Sciences, Economics, Political Science, Philosophy, Chemistry, Sociology, etc. Projects should contribute to greater knowledge or understanding of one of these three categories of risks.

Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowship Program

The Deloitte Foundation, through its Doctoral Fellowship Program, provides financial support to outstanding doctoral students in accounting as they complete their coursework and dissertations. Up to 10 students are selected to be Deloitte Fellows each year. Each Fellow receives a grant of $25,000, disbursed in four payments over two years, to help cover expenses during the final year of coursework and during the subsequent year of writing a dissertation.

Ford Foundation

The dissertation fellowships provide one year of support for individuals working to complete a dissertation leading to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or Doctor of Science (ScD) degree. Dissertation fellowships will be awarded in a national competition administered by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies on behalf of the Ford Foundation. Applicants must be US citizens and be PhD or ScD degree candidates studying in an eligible research-based discipline at a US educational institution.

Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Dissertation fellowships are available for advanced doctoral students and are intended to support the student for work done after the student’s dissertation proposal has been accepted. Applications are encouraged from a variety of disciplines such as, but not limited to, education, sociology, economics, psychology, statistics, and psychometrics. The fellowship is a one-time award of $25,000, which may be used for a period of not less than nine months and up to 18 months.

IBM PhD Fellowship Awards

Students must be nominated by a faculty member. The faculty member is encouraged to contact an IBM colleague prior to submitting the nomination to assure mutual interest. Applicants must be enrolled full-time in a college or university PhD program, and they must have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program at the time of their nomination.

Kauffman Foundation

The Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program is an annual competitive program that awards up to fifteen Dissertation Fellowship grants of $20,000 each to PhD, DBA, or other doctoral students at accredited US universities to support dissertations in the area of entrepreneurship.

NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation

The mission of The NASDAQ OMX Group Educational Foundation, Inc. is to promote learning about capital formation, financial markets and entrepreneurship through innovative educational programs. PhD dissertation fellowships are granted in the set amount of $15,000. There is a two stage application process: letter of inquiry followed by full proposal if invited.

Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

The fellowship honors and supports the graduate educations of 30 New Americans – permanent residents or naturalized citizens if born abroad; otherwise children of naturalized citizen parents -- each year. At the time of their selection, fellows must be college seniors or early in the graduate programs for which they request support. Each fellow receives tuition and living expenses that can total as much as $90,000 over two academic years. Fellows can study in any degree-granting program in any field at any university in the United States. Fellows are selected on the basis of merit – the specific criteria emphasize creativity, originality, initiative and sustained accomplishment -- in annual national competitions. Candidates apply directly. The program does not depend on recommendations from universities or regional screening. Neither financial need nor distributive considerations are taken into account in the selection process.

Spencer Foundation

These $25,000 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world. Although the dissertation topic must concern education, graduate study may be in any academic discipline or professional field. In the past, fellowships have been awarded to candidates in anthropology, architecture, art history, communications, economics, education, history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, public health, religion, and sociology, but eligibility is not restricted to these academic areas. Candidates should be interested in pursuing further research on education once the doctorate is attained.

The Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies

The program encourages original and significant research about women that crosses disciplinary, regional, or cultural boundaries. Fellowships are provided to PhD candidates at institutions in the United States who will complete their dissertations during the fellowship year.

Other Independent Organizations

Mellon/acls dissertation completion fellowships.

The fellowship supports a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of PhD dissertation writing. The program encourages timely completion of the PhD Applicants must be prepared to complete their dissertations within the period of their fellowship tenure. The total award of up to $33,000 includes a stipend plus additional funds for university fees and research support. In addition to the monetary support that the fellowship offers, Dissertation Completion Fellows are able to apply to participate in a seminar on preparing for the academic job market.  The seminar takes place over three days in the fall of the fellowship year.

American Bar Foundation

Applications are invited from outstanding students who are candidates for PhD degrees in the social sciences. Doctoral and proposed research must be in the general area of sociolegal studies or in social scientific approaches to law, the legal profession, or legal institutions. Fellows receive a stipend of $27,000 for 12 months. Fellows also may request up to $1,500 to reimburse expenses associated with research, travel to meet with advisors, or travel to conferences at which papers are presented. 

Dissertation Awards

Upjohn institute for employment research: dissertation award.

The WE Upjohn Institute for Employment Research invites submissions for its annual prize for the best PhD dissertation on employment-related issues. A first prize of $2,500 is being offered. Up to two honorable mention awards of $1,000 may also be given. The Institute supports and conducts policy-relevant research on issues related to employment, unemployment, and social insurance programs. The dissertation award furthers this mission. The dissertation may come from any academic discipline, but it must have a substantial policy thrust.

Grants Targeted to PhD Students

Russell sage foundation small grants program in behavioral economics.

The Russell Sage Behavioral Economics Roundtable supports a small grants research program to support high quality research in behavioral economics and to encourage young investigators to enter this developing field. There are no limitations on the disciplinary background of the principal investigator, and the proposed research may address any economic topic. Applicants must be advanced doctoral students or junior (non-tenured) faculty members who have been out of graduate school for two or fewer years. There is a $7,500 lifetime limit of support under the Behavioral Economics Program.

International Fellowships

Japan foundation.

In order to promote Japanese Studies, this program provides support to outstanding scholars in the field by offering the opportunity to conduct research in Japan.

SSRC-International Dissertation Fellowships

The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who are enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research outside of the United States. IDRF promotes research that is situated in a specific discipline and geographical region but is also informed by interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. Research topics may address all periods in history, but applicants should be alert to the broader implications of their research as it relates to contemporary issues and debates. Seventy-five fellowships are awarded annually.  Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $18,750. The fellowship includes participation in an interdisciplinary workshop upon the completion of IDRF-funded research.

Useful links & Databases

• Types of graduate fellowships
• Applying for fellowships: advice for international students from Columbia College
• How to Win a Graduate Fellowship, the Chronicle of Higher Education
• Harvard University CARAT database
• UCLA’s fellowship database
• Duke's Database
• H-Net  — humanities and social sciences opportunities

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Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Completion Grants

Program summary.

The Doctoral Dissertation Completion Grant program provides both funding and intensive mentoring to doctoral candidates who are within six months of completing their dissertations. It is designed to enable candidates to focus full time on the writing of their dissertations, improving the quality of the dissertation and shortening the time required to complete the doctoral degree.

Eligibility

• This grant is for students who have demonstrated difficulties in completing the dissertation and would benefit from the intensive mentoring and the six months dedicated to writing that are provided by this program.
• Grants are available to doctoral candidates (ABD) who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents in any field of study.
• To be eligible for a grant, students must have collected all data, completed all major research, and be in their final year of dissertation writing and must have completed all course requirements, as well as preliminary written and oral exams.
• Eligibility is limited to those who have the potential for completing the dissertation within the 6-month grant period.
• Grant recipients may not simultaneously hold assistantships or be engaged in outside employment during the tenure of their awards.

The student’s committee chair must be prepared to participate fully in this program and do all he or she can to expedite the student’s progress, including meeting with the student frequently and returning drafts in a timely manner.

Program Requirements

As grantees, the students must agree to:

• Attend all biweekly small group writing meetings
•  Read and comment on three (3) other group members’ drafts and share feedback at the meetings
• Attend all regularly scheduled counseling center-facilitated support group meetings with other program participants
• Reach out to meet individually with the designated writing coaches as needed
• Actively support other grantees in meeting the shared goal of completing their dissertations

Participants must participate in all meetings in person, rather than virtually. Students’ progress towards completion of the dissertation, as well as the extent to which they are participating in all program activities, will be continually evaluated. Should a student not be making satisfactory progress and/or participating in program activities, the grant may be terminated.

A total of 16 grants will be awarded to doctoral candidates in 2024-2025. Eight awards will be made for the period July 1 to December 31, 2024, and another eight awards made for the period January 1 to June 30, 2025. Students will receive a stipend in the amount of $10,000 during their grant period, which will be disbursed in monthly installments. In addition to the stipend, health insurance and tuition will be covered by the grant.

Application Process

Students may be nominated for only one grant period. The Graduate School will send a call for nomination to the Directors of Graduate Programs for the grant. For more information about the grant, please contact Dr. David Shafer in the Graduate School via e-mail at [email protected] .

Application Deadlines and Review

Applications will be reviewed by a committee appointed by the Graduate School. Grant periods for 2024-25 are as follows: July 1 to December 31, 2024, and January 1 to June 30, 2025. The deadline for receipt of nominations for the first grant period is May 17, 2024, and for the second grant period is October 18, 2024. Awards will be announced by June 2024 and November 2024, respectively.

For further information, please contact Dr. David Shafer, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, at 919-515-4462 or via e-mail at [email protected] .

Grant Proposals (or Give me the money!)

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you write and revise grant proposals for research funding in all academic disciplines (sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts). It’s targeted primarily to graduate students and faculty, although it will also be helpful to undergraduate students who are seeking funding for research (e.g. for a senior thesis).

The grant writing process

A grant proposal or application is a document or set of documents that is submitted to an organization with the explicit intent of securing funding for a research project. Grant writing varies widely across the disciplines, and research intended for epistemological purposes (philosophy or the arts) rests on very different assumptions than research intended for practical applications (medicine or social policy research). Nonetheless, this handout attempts to provide a general introduction to grant writing across the disciplines.

Before you begin writing your proposal, you need to know what kind of research you will be doing and why. You may have a topic or experiment in mind, but taking the time to define what your ultimate purpose is can be essential to convincing others to fund that project. Although some scholars in the humanities and arts may not have thought about their projects in terms of research design, hypotheses, research questions, or results, reviewers and funding agencies expect you to frame your project in these terms. You may also find that thinking about your project in these terms reveals new aspects of it to you.

Writing successful grant applications is a long process that begins with an idea. Although many people think of grant writing as a linear process (from idea to proposal to award), it is a circular process. Many people start by defining their research question or questions. What knowledge or information will be gained as a direct result of your project? Why is undertaking your research important in a broader sense? You will need to explicitly communicate this purpose to the committee reviewing your application. This is easier when you know what you plan to achieve before you begin the writing process.

Diagram 1 below provides an overview of the grant writing process and may help you plan your proposal development.

Applicants must write grant proposals, submit them, receive notice of acceptance or rejection, and then revise their proposals. Unsuccessful grant applicants must revise and resubmit their proposals during the next funding cycle. Successful grant applications and the resulting research lead to ideas for further research and new grant proposals.

Cultivating an ongoing, positive relationship with funding agencies may lead to additional grants down the road. Thus, make sure you file progress reports and final reports in a timely and professional manner. Although some successful grant applicants may fear that funding agencies will reject future proposals because they’ve already received “enough” funding, the truth is that money follows money. Individuals or projects awarded grants in the past are more competitive and thus more likely to receive funding in the future.

Some general tips

• Begin early.
• Apply early and often.
• Don’t forget to include a cover letter with your application.
• Answer all questions. (Pre-empt all unstated questions.)
• If rejected, revise your proposal and apply again.
• Give them what they want. Follow the application guidelines exactly.
• Be explicit and specific.
• Be realistic in designing the project.
• Make explicit the connections between your research questions and objectives, your objectives and methods, your methods and results, and your results and dissemination plan.
• Follow the application guidelines exactly. (We have repeated this tip because it is very, very important.)

Before you start writing

Identify your needs and focus.

First, identify your needs. Answering the following questions may help you:

• Are you undertaking preliminary or pilot research in order to develop a full-blown research agenda?
• Are you seeking funding for dissertation research? Pre-dissertation research? Postdoctoral research? Archival research? Experimental research? Fieldwork?
• Are you seeking a stipend so that you can write a dissertation or book? Polish a manuscript?
• Do you want a fellowship in residence at an institution that will offer some programmatic support or other resources to enhance your project?
• Do you want funding for a large research project that will last for several years and involve multiple staff members?

Next, think about the focus of your research/project. Answering the following questions may help you narrow it down:

• What is the topic? Why is this topic important?
• What are the research questions that you’re trying to answer? What relevance do your research questions have?
• What are your hypotheses?
• What are your research methods?
• Why is your research/project important? What is its significance?
• Do you plan on using quantitative methods? Qualitative methods? Both?
• Will you be undertaking experimental research? Clinical research?

Once you have identified your needs and focus, you can begin looking for prospective grants and funding agencies.

Finding prospective grants and funding agencies

Whether your proposal receives funding will rely in large part on whether your purpose and goals closely match the priorities of granting agencies. Locating possible grantors is a time consuming task, but in the long run it will yield the greatest benefits. Even if you have the most appealing research proposal in the world, if you don’t send it to the right institutions, then you’re unlikely to receive funding.

There are many sources of information about granting agencies and grant programs. Most universities and many schools within universities have Offices of Research, whose primary purpose is to support faculty and students in grant-seeking endeavors. These offices usually have libraries or resource centers to help people find prospective grants.

At UNC, the Research at Carolina office coordinates research support.

The Funding Information Portal offers a collection of databases and proposal development guidance.

The UNC School of Medicine and School of Public Health each have their own Office of Research.

Writing your proposal

The majority of grant programs recruit academic reviewers with knowledge of the disciplines and/or program areas of the grant. Thus, when writing your grant proposals, assume that you are addressing a colleague who is knowledgeable in the general area, but who does not necessarily know the details about your research questions.

Remember that most readers are lazy and will not respond well to a poorly organized, poorly written, or confusing proposal. Be sure to give readers what they want. Follow all the guidelines for the particular grant you are applying for. This may require you to reframe your project in a different light or language. Reframing your project to fit a specific grant’s requirements is a legitimate and necessary part of the process unless it will fundamentally change your project’s goals or outcomes.

Final decisions about which proposals are funded often come down to whether the proposal convinces the reviewer that the research project is well planned and feasible and whether the investigators are well qualified to execute it. Throughout the proposal, be as explicit as possible. Predict the questions that the reviewer may have and answer them. Przeworski and Salomon (1995) note that reviewers read with three questions in mind:

• What are we going to learn as a result of the proposed project that we do not know now? (goals, aims, and outcomes)
• Why is it worth knowing? (significance)
• How will we know that the conclusions are valid? (criteria for success) (2)

Be sure to answer these questions in your proposal. Keep in mind that reviewers may not read every word of your proposal. Your reviewer may only read the abstract, the sections on research design and methodology, the vitae, and the budget. Make these sections as clear and straightforward as possible.

The way you write your grant will tell the reviewers a lot about you (Reif-Lehrer 82). From reading your proposal, the reviewers will form an idea of who you are as a scholar, a researcher, and a person. They will decide whether you are creative, logical, analytical, up-to-date in the relevant literature of the field, and, most importantly, capable of executing the proposed project. Allow your discipline and its conventions to determine the general style of your writing, but allow your own voice and personality to come through. Be sure to clarify your project’s theoretical orientation.

Develop a general proposal and budget

Because most proposal writers seek funding from several different agencies or granting programs, it is a good idea to begin by developing a general grant proposal and budget. This general proposal is sometimes called a “white paper.” Your general proposal should explain your project to a general academic audience. Before you submit proposals to different grant programs, you will tailor a specific proposal to their guidelines and priorities.

Organizing your proposal

Although each funding agency will have its own (usually very specific) requirements, there are several elements of a proposal that are fairly standard, and they often come in the following order:

• Introduction (statement of the problem, purpose of research or goals, and significance of research)

Literature review

• Project narrative (methods, procedures, objectives, outcomes or deliverables, evaluation, and dissemination)
• Budget and budget justification

Format the proposal so that it is easy to read. Use headings to break the proposal up into sections. If it is long, include a table of contents with page numbers.

The title page usually includes a brief yet explicit title for the research project, the names of the principal investigator(s), the institutional affiliation of the applicants (the department and university), name and address of the granting agency, project dates, amount of funding requested, and signatures of university personnel authorizing the proposal (when necessary). Most funding agencies have specific requirements for the title page; make sure to follow them.

The abstract provides readers with their first impression of your project. To remind themselves of your proposal, readers may glance at your abstract when making their final recommendations, so it may also serve as their last impression of your project. The abstract should explain the key elements of your research project in the future tense. Most abstracts state: (1) the general purpose, (2) specific goals, (3) research design, (4) methods, and (5) significance (contribution and rationale). Be as explicit as possible in your abstract. Use statements such as, “The objective of this study is to …”

Introduction

The introduction should cover the key elements of your proposal, including a statement of the problem, the purpose of research, research goals or objectives, and significance of the research. The statement of problem should provide a background and rationale for the project and establish the need and relevance of the research. How is your project different from previous research on the same topic? Will you be using new methodologies or covering new theoretical territory? The research goals or objectives should identify the anticipated outcomes of the research and should match up to the needs identified in the statement of problem. List only the principle goal(s) or objective(s) of your research and save sub-objectives for the project narrative.

Many proposals require a literature review. Reviewers want to know whether you’ve done the necessary preliminary research to undertake your project. Literature reviews should be selective and critical, not exhaustive. Reviewers want to see your evaluation of pertinent works. For more information, see our handout on literature reviews .

Project narrative

The project narrative provides the meat of your proposal and may require several subsections. The project narrative should supply all the details of the project, including a detailed statement of problem, research objectives or goals, hypotheses, methods, procedures, outcomes or deliverables, and evaluation and dissemination of the research.

For the project narrative, pre-empt and/or answer all of the reviewers’ questions. Don’t leave them wondering about anything. For example, if you propose to conduct unstructured interviews with open-ended questions, be sure you’ve explained why this methodology is best suited to the specific research questions in your proposal. Or, if you’re using item response theory rather than classical test theory to verify the validity of your survey instrument, explain the advantages of this innovative methodology. Or, if you need to travel to Valdez, Alaska to access historical archives at the Valdez Museum, make it clear what documents you hope to find and why they are relevant to your historical novel on the ’98ers in the Alaskan Gold Rush.

Clearly and explicitly state the connections between your research objectives, research questions, hypotheses, methodologies, and outcomes. As the requirements for a strong project narrative vary widely by discipline, consult a discipline-specific guide to grant writing for some additional advice.

Explain staffing requirements in detail and make sure that staffing makes sense. Be very explicit about the skill sets of the personnel already in place (you will probably include their Curriculum Vitae as part of the proposal). Explain the necessary skill sets and functions of personnel you will recruit. To minimize expenses, phase out personnel who are not relevant to later phases of a project.

The budget spells out project costs and usually consists of a spreadsheet or table with the budget detailed as line items and a budget narrative (also known as a budget justification) that explains the various expenses. Even when proposal guidelines do not specifically mention a narrative, be sure to include a one or two page explanation of the budget. To see a sample budget, turn to Example #1 at the end of this handout.

Consider including an exhaustive budget for your project, even if it exceeds the normal grant size of a particular funding organization. Simply make it clear that you are seeking additional funding from other sources. This technique will make it easier for you to combine awards down the road should you have the good fortune of receiving multiple grants.

Make sure that all budget items meet the funding agency’s requirements. For example, all U.S. government agencies have strict requirements for airline travel. Be sure the cost of the airline travel in your budget meets their requirements. If a line item falls outside an agency’s requirements (e.g. some organizations will not cover equipment purchases or other capital expenses), explain in the budget justification that other grant sources will pay for the item.

Many universities require that indirect costs (overhead) be added to grants that they administer. Check with the appropriate offices to find out what the standard (or required) rates are for overhead. Pass a draft budget by the university officer in charge of grant administration for assistance with indirect costs and costs not directly associated with research (e.g. facilities use charges).

Furthermore, make sure you factor in the estimated taxes applicable for your case. Depending on the categories of expenses and your particular circumstances (whether you are a foreign national, for example), estimated tax rates may differ. You can consult respective departmental staff or university services, as well as professional tax assistants. For information on taxes on scholarships and fellowships, see https://cashier.unc.edu/student-tax-information/scholarships-fellowships/ .

Explain the timeframe for the research project in some detail. When will you begin and complete each step? It may be helpful to reviewers if you present a visual version of your timeline. For less complicated research, a table summarizing the timeline for the project will help reviewers understand and evaluate the planning and feasibility. See Example #2 at the end of this handout.

For multi-year research proposals with numerous procedures and a large staff, a time line diagram can help clarify the feasibility and planning of the study. See Example #3 at the end of this handout.

Revising your proposal

Strong grant proposals take a long time to develop. Start the process early and leave time to get feedback from several readers on different drafts. Seek out a variety of readers, both specialists in your research area and non-specialist colleagues. You may also want to request assistance from knowledgeable readers on specific areas of your proposal. For example, you may want to schedule a meeting with a statistician to help revise your methodology section. Don’t hesitate to seek out specialized assistance from the relevant research offices on your campus. At UNC, the Odum Institute provides a variety of services to graduate students and faculty in the social sciences.

In your revision and editing, ask your readers to give careful consideration to whether you’ve made explicit the connections between your research objectives and methodology. Here are some example questions:

• Have you presented a compelling case?
• Have you made your hypotheses explicit?
• Does your project seem feasible? Is it overly ambitious? Does it have other weaknesses?
• Have you stated the means that grantors can use to evaluate the success of your project after you’ve executed it?

If a granting agency lists particular criteria used for rating and evaluating proposals, be sure to share these with your own reviewers.

Example #1. Sample Budget

Jet travel $6,100 This estimate is based on the commercial high season rate for jet economy travel on Sabena Belgian Airlines. No U.S. carriers fly to Kigali, Rwanda. Sabena has student fare tickets available which will be significantly less expensive (approximately $2,000).

Maintenance allowance $22,788 Based on the Fulbright-Hays Maintenance Allowances published in the grant application guide.

Research assistant/translator $4,800 The research assistant/translator will be a native (and primary) speaker of Kinya-rwanda with at least a four-year university degree. They will accompany the primary investigator during life history interviews to provide assistance in comprehension. In addition, they will provide commentary, explanations, and observations to facilitate the primary investigator’s participant observation. During the first phase of the project in Kigali, the research assistant will work forty hours a week and occasional overtime as needed. During phases two and three in rural Rwanda, the assistant will stay with the investigator overnight in the field when necessary. The salary of $400 per month is based on the average pay rate for individuals with similar qualifications working for international NGO’s in Rwanda.

Transportation within country, phase one $1,200 The primary investigator and research assistant will need regular transportation within Kigali by bus and taxi. The average taxi fare in Kigali is $6-8 and bus fare is $.15. This figure is based on an average of $10 per day in transportation costs during the first project phase.

Transportation within country, phases two and three $12,000 Project personnel will also require regular transportation between rural field sites. If it is not possible to remain overnight, daily trips will be necessary. The average rental rate for a 4×4 vehicle in Rwanda is $130 per day. This estimate is based on an average of $50 per day in transportation costs for the second and third project phases. These costs could be reduced if an arrangement could be made with either a government ministry or international aid agency for transportation assistance.

Email $720 The rate for email service from RwandaTel (the only service provider in Rwanda) is $60 per month. Email access is vital for receiving news reports on Rwanda and the region as well as for staying in contact with dissertation committee members and advisors in the United States.

Audiocassette tapes $400 Audiocassette tapes will be necessary for recording life history interviews, musical performances, community events, story telling, and other pertinent data.

Photographic & slide film $100 Photographic and slide film will be necessary to document visual data such as landscape, environment, marriages, funerals, community events, etc.

Laptop computer $2,895 A laptop computer will be necessary for recording observations, thoughts, and analysis during research project. Price listed is a special offer to UNC students through the Carolina Computing Initiative.

NUD*IST 4.0 software $373.00 NUD*IST, “Nonnumerical, Unstructured Data, Indexing, Searching, and Theorizing,” is necessary for cataloging, indexing, and managing field notes both during and following the field research phase. The program will assist in cataloging themes that emerge during the life history interviews.

Administrative fee $100 Fee set by Fulbright-Hays for the sponsoring institution.

Example #2: Project Timeline in Table Format

Example #3: Project Timeline in Chart Format

Some closing advice

Some of us may feel ashamed or embarrassed about asking for money or promoting ourselves. Often, these feelings have more to do with our own insecurities than with problems in the tone or style of our writing. If you’re having trouble because of these types of hang-ups, the most important thing to keep in mind is that it never hurts to ask. If you never ask for the money, they’ll never give you the money. Besides, the worst thing they can do is say no.

UNC resources for proposal writing

Research at Carolina http://research.unc.edu

The Odum Institute for Research in the Social Sciences https://odum.unc.edu/

UNC Medical School Office of Research https://www.med.unc.edu/oor

UNC School of Public Health Office of Research http://www.sph.unc.edu/research/

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Holloway, Brian R. 2003. Proposal Writing Across the Disciplines. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Levine, S. Joseph. “Guide for Writing a Funding Proposal.” http://www.learnerassociates.net/proposal/ .

Locke, Lawrence F., Waneen Wyrick Spirduso, and Stephen J. Silverman. 2014. Proposals That Work . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Przeworski, Adam, and Frank Salomon. 2012. “Some Candid Suggestions on the Art of Writing Proposals.” Social Science Research Council. https://s3.amazonaws.com/ssrc-cdn2/art-of-writing-proposals-dsd-e-56b50ef814f12.pdf .

Reif-Lehrer, Liane. 1989. Writing a Successful Grant Application . Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Wiggins, Beverly. 2002. “Funding and Proposal Writing for Social Science Faculty and Graduate Student Research.” Chapel Hill: Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. 2 Feb. 2004. http://www2.irss.unc.edu/irss/shortcourses/wigginshandouts/granthandout.pdf.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Department of African American Studies

PIIRS Graduate Fellows/Dissertation Writing Grants

United States

PIIRS awards up to 20 dissertation writing grants annually for either a semester or the full academic year to graduate students who work in international and regional studies (broadly defined) and who have reached  Dissertation Completion Enrollment (DCE)  status. Three options are available: 

• Full-year grant with a stipend plus full DCE costs;
• Half-year grant with a stipend plus full DCE costs;
• Half-year grant with a stipend plus ½ DCE costs.

Full-year grants are awarded for the academic year (August to May), and the stipend rate is equal to 10 months of the  University Fellowship . Half-year grants are awarded for 5 months, and the stipend rate is equal to 5 months of the  University Fellowship . Graduate students who receive dissertation writing grants will be appointed as  PIIRS Graduate Fellows . Space permitting, those with yearlong support will be provided with shared office space in the PIIRS suite in the Louis A. Simpson International Building. All fellows are expected to work on completing their dissertations in residence at PIIRS during the academic year.  Fellowship recipients are required to participate in the weekly PIIRS Graduate Fellows Seminar in which they present a portion of their dissertation and engage in substantive interdisciplinary discussion and critique.     To Apply  

• Submit an application (see Application Details below) by  e-mail .
• Complete the  PIIRS EXTERNAL FUNDING FORM  summarizing efforts to secure funding from agencies outside Princeton, and submit the completed form by e-mail.
• Request  two  letters of recommendation to be sent by  e-mail . It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that all letters of recommendation are received. PIIRS will not request letters of recommendation from advisers if they are missing from the application file.
• All documents must be received at PIIRS by March 15, 2023 .

Priority for PIIRS funding will be given to students who apply for external financial support. Please consult “External Funding Sources for Language Study, Research, and Fellowships,” available on the  PIIRS website , for a list of external grants for which students may be eligible. Applicants are required to inform PIIRS if they receive awards from other sources as soon as that information is available.   Students are strongly encouraged to seek matching support from their home departments, as those departments may have the capacity to partner with PIIRS to create full stipends.  NB: PIIRS will not consider students simultaneously for research grants AND for writing grants. PIIRS assumes that students who are ready to write are not still in the data-collection stage.    Application Details    Applications should be no longer than 10 pages (double-spaced). In terms of detail, these applications should be on a par with those that students might submit to external agencies for support. They should detail the central idea of the dissertation and include: 

• Applicant’s name, department, and PU ID number;
• Significance of the research to the field;
• Data, methods, and substance of the work;
• Summary of progress to date;
• Timeline from the beginning of the research to the completion of the thesis;
• Indicate whether, as a PIIRS Graduate Fellow, you would be willing to be in residence at PIIRS in shared office space for the year and to participate in the activities of the PIIRS Graduate Fellows seminar.*

All recipients of PIIRS Dissertation Writing Grants must submit a report on work accomplished.  For those receiving support for the academic year 2023-24, reports must be submitted to the PIIRS office by October 31, 2024.   For more information on Dissertation Writing Grants and the PIIRS Graduate Fellows program, please contact  Rachel Golden . 

• A Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis

Written by Ben Taylor

A PhD thesis is a work of original research all students are requiured to submit in order to succesfully complete their PhD. The thesis details the research that you carried out during the course of your doctoral degree and highlights the outcomes and conclusions reached.

The PhD thesis is the most important part of a doctoral research degree: the culmination of three or four years of full-time work towards producing an original contribution to your academic field.

Your PhD dissertation can therefore seem like quite a daunting possibility, with a hefty word count, the pressure of writing something new and, of course, the prospect of defending it at a viva once you’ve finished.

This page will give you an introduction to what you need to know about the doctoral thesis, with advice on structure, feedback, submission and more.

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Beginning your PhD thesis

The first stage of your PhD thesis will usually be the literature review . We’ve already written a detailed guide to what the PhD literature review involves , but here’s what you need to know about this stage of your PhD:

• The literature review is a chance for you to display your knowledge and understanding of what’s already been written about your research area – this could consist of papers, articles, books, data and more
• Rather than simply summarising what other scholars have said about your subject, you should aim to assess and analyse their arguments
• The literature review is usually the first task of your PhD – and typically forms the first part or chapter of your dissertation

After finishing your literature review, you’ll move onto the bulk of your doctoral thesis. Of course, you’ll eventually return to the lit review to make sure it’s up-to-date and contains any additional material you may have come across during the course of your research.

PhD thesis research

What sets your PhD thesis apart from previous university work you’ve done is the fact that it should represent an original contribution to academic knowledge . The form that this original contribution takes will largely depend on your discipline.

• Arts and Humanities dissertations usually involve investigating different texts, sources and theoretical frameworks
• Social Sciences are more likely to focus on qualitive or quantitative surveys and case studies
• STEM subjects involve designing, recording and analysing experiments, using their data to prove or disprove a set theory

Depending on the nature of your research, you may ‘write up’ your findings as you go, or leave it until the dedicated ‘writing-up’ period, usually in the third year of your PhD. Whatever your approach, it’s vital to keep detailed notes of your sources and methods – it’ll make your life a lot easier when it comes to using references in your dissertation further down the line.

PhD thesis vs dissertation

It’s common to use the terms ‘thesis’ and ‘dissertation’ interchangeably, but strictly speaking there is a difference in meaning between them:

• Your thesis is your argument. It’s the conclusions you’ve arrived at through surveying existing scholarship in your literature review and combining this with the results of your own original research.
• Your dissertation is the written statement of your thesis. This is where you lay out your findings in a way that systematically demonstrates and proves your conclusion.

Put simply, you submit a dissertation, but it’s the thesis it attempts to prove that will form the basis of your PhD.

What this also means is that the writing up of your dissertation generally follows the formulation of your doctoral thesis (it’s fairly difficult to write up a PhD before you know what you want to say!).

However, it’s normal for universities and academics to use either (or both) terms when describing PhD research – indeed, we use both ‘thesis’ and ‘dissertation’ across our website.

Can I use my Masters research in my PhD thesis?

If you’re studying an MPhil, it’s normal to ‘ upgrade ’ it into a PhD. Find mroe information on our guide.

PhD thesis structure

Having completed your initial literature review and conducted your original research, you’ll move onto the next phase of your doctoral dissertation, beginning to sketch out a plan that your thesis will follow.

The exact structure and make-up of your doctoral thesis will vary between fields, but this is the general template that many dissertations follow:

• Introduction – This sets out the key objectives of your project, why the work is significant and what its original contribution to knowledge is. At this point you may also summarise the remaining chapters, offering an abstract of the argument you will go on to develop.
• Literature review – The introduction will generally lead into a write-up of your literature review. Here you’ll outline the scholarly context for your project. You’ll acknowledge where existing research has shaped your PhD, but emphasise the unique nature of your work.
• Chapters – After you’ve finished introducing your research, you’ll begin the bulk of the dissertation. This will summarise your results and begin explaining the argument you have based on them. Some PhDs will also include specific chapters on methodology and / or a recreation of the data you have developed. Others will develop your argument over a series of stages, drawing on sources and results as relevant.
• Conclusion – The dissertation will end with a final chapter that pulls together the different elements of your argument and the evidence you have provided for it. You’ll restate the significance of your project (and its all-important original contribution to knowledge). You may also take the opportunity to acknowledge the potential for further work or opportunities to apply your findings outside academia.
• Bibliography and appendices – At the end of your thesis, you’ll need to include a full list of the books, articles and data you’ve referenced in a bibliography. You may also need to provide additional information in the form of an appendix.

How long is a PhD thesis?

The length of a PhD thesis varies from subject to subject, but all are far longer than those for undergraduate or Masters degrees. Your university will usually set an upper limit – typically between 70,000 and 100,000 words, with most dissertations coming in at around 80,000 words.

Generally speaking, STEM-based theses will be a little shorter than those in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Different universities (and departments) will have different policies regarding what counts towards the PhD thesis word count, so make sure you’re aware what is expected of you. Check with your supervisor whether references, the bibliography or appendices are included in the word count for your dissertation.

How many chapters should a PhD thesis have?

There’s no hard and fast rule for the numbers of chapters in a PhD thesis, but most will have four or five chapters (in addition to the introduction and conclusion). This is the sort of thing you’ll discuss with your supervisor when planning out your research.

Writing up your PhD thesis

Once you’ve conducted your research and settled upon your thesis, there’s only one thing left to do: get it down on paper. Appropriately enough, this final part of a PhD is often referred to as the ‘ writing up period ’.

This is when you produce the final dissertation, which will be submitted as the basis for your viva voce exam. The nature of this task can vary from PhD to PhD.

In some cases you may already have a large amount of chapter drafts and other material. ‘Writing up’ therefore becomes a process of re-drafting and assembling this work into a final dissertation. This approach is common in Arts and Humanities subjects where PhD students tend to work through stages of a project, writing as they go.

Alternatively, you may have spent most of your PhD collecting and analysing data. If so, you’ll now ‘write up’ your findings and conclusions in order to produce your final dissertation. This approach is more common in STEM subjects, where experiment design and data collection are much more resource intensive.

Whatever process you adopt, you’ll now produce a persuasive and coherent statement of your argument, ready to submit for examination.

PhD thesis feedback

Your supervisor will usually give you feedback on each chapter draft, and then feedback on the overall completed dissertation draft before you submit it for examination. When the thesis is a work-in-progress, their comments will be a chance for them to make sure your research is going in the right direction and for you to ask their advice on anything you’re concerned about. This feedback will normally be given in the form of a supervisory meeting.

Although your PhD supervisor will be happy to give you advice on your work, you shouldn’t expect them to be an editor – it’s not their responsibility to correct grammatical or spelling mistakes, and you should make sure any drafts you submit to them are as error-free as possible. Similarly, they won’t be willing to edit your work down to fit a particular word count.

Finishing your PhD thesis

When you’ve finished the final draft of your doctoral thesis and it’s been approved by your supervisor, you’ll submit it for examination. This is when it’s sent to the examiners who will conduct your viva.

Submitting your thesis involves printing enough copies for your examiners and the university’s repository. Don’t leave this until the last minute – printing multiple copies of a 300-page document is a substantial undertaking and you should always allow enough time to account for any possible glitches or issues with the printing process.

Your viva will usually take place within three months of submitting your thesis. You can find out more in our dedicated guide to the PhD viva . After your viva, your examiners will give you a report that confirms whether or not you need to make any changes to your thesis, with several different potential outcomes:

• Pass – You’ve received your doctoral qualification!
• Minor corrections – These are usually fairly small edits, tweaks and improvements to your thesis, which you’ll be given three months to implement
• Major corrections – For these substantial changes, you may have to rewrite part of your dissertation or complete extra research, with a six-month deadline

Most PhD students will need to fix some corrections with their thesis (hopefully not major ones). It’s very rare for a dissertation to be failed.

Once you’ve made any necessary changes to your thesis, you’ll submit it one last time (usually electronically).

If you have plans to publish all or part of your work, you may want to request an embargo so that it won’t be visible to the public for a certain time. 12 months is a fairly standard time period for this, although you may want to ask for a longer embargo if you know that you want to turn your thesis into a book or monograph.

Take a look at our programme listings and find the perfect PhD for you.

Our postgrad newsletter shares courses, funding news, stories and advice

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The PhD is the most common variety of doctorate, but others are awarded in specific disciplines or sometimes particular countries.

Joint PhD programmes involve collaboration between two (or more) different universities. So how does that work? Who can apply? And what are the advantages (and disadvantages) of researching in this way?

Integrated PhD programmes consist of a one-year Masters followed by three years of PhD research. Find out more about what it's like to study an integrated PhD, how to apply and the funding options available.

Thinking of applying for the Doctor of Engineering (EngD)? Our guide covers everything you need to know about the qualification, including costs, applications, programme content, and how it differs from a PhD.

A PhD isn't the only option for postgraduate researchers. Our guides explain professional doctorates, joint degrees and compare other qualification types.

How does the value of an MPhil compare with a PhD, and why might you choose the Masters over the doctorate?

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Dissertation Fieldwork Grant

• Doctoral Students

This grant program funds doctoral or thesis research that advances anthropological knowledge. Our goal is to support vibrant and significant work that furthers our understanding of what it means to be human. There is no preference for any methodology, research location, topic, or subfield. The Foundation particularly welcomes proposals that integrate two or more subfields and pioneer new approaches and ideas.

Award Money

The maximum Dissertation Fieldwork Grant is $25,000. Grants are nonrenewable. There is no limit to the duration of the grant, and applicants may request funding to cover distinct research phases (for example, two summers) if this is part of the research design. Wenner-Gren awards do not include funds to cover institutional overhead or any fees related to the administration of our grants and fellowships.

Application Deadline

Application deadlines are May 1 (for project start dates between January 1 and June 30 of the following year) and November 1 (for project start dates between July 1 and December 31 of the following year). The application portal opens 2 months before the deadline. It takes us 6 months to complete the review process and arrive at a final decision.

Who Can Apply

Applicants must be enrolled in a doctoral program (or equivalent, if outside the U.S.). Qualified students of any nationality or institutional affiliation may apply. Applicants must designate a dissertation advisor or other scholar from the same institution who will take responsibility for supervising the project.

To receive an award, applicants must fulfill all of their program’s doctoral degree requirements, other than the dissertation/thesis, before the start date listed on their application form. Successful applicants must provide proof from their department that they have completed all the necessary coursework and exams.

Unsuccessful applicants are welcome to reapply. But as part of their resubmission, they must explain how they have addressed the reviewers’ concerns, along with any changes to their plans.

Our reviewers assess the quality of the proposed research, its potential contribution to anthropological knowledge, and its adherence to the principles articulated in our mission, including a commitment to fostering an inclusive vision of anthropology. We expect applicants to draw inspiration from a broad range of scholarship, including relevant work in English and other languages. Please refer to “ Motion of the 32nd RBA: Diversify Information and Education about the Global Anthropologies of Foreign Researchers and Anthropology Students .”

Successful proposals have the following features:

• A well-defined research question
• A detailed description of the evidence that will be sought
• A feasible plan for gathering and analyzing this evidence
• A discussion of the applicant’s qualifications to carry out the research
• A compelling account of the project’s potential to advance anthropological knowledge and transform debates in the field.

Applicants whose research is oriented toward primatology or primate conservation must demonstrate the broader anthropological relevance of their work. The Foundation supports work on language structure and endangered languages, but only when it is grounded in anthropological concerns.

To present your project in the best possible light, please follow all instructions for completing your application. Use all the available space to describe your project. If you have questions, contact us at [email protected] or (+1) 212.683.5000.

The application asks for the following:

General information about you and your project

• An abstract of your proposed project
• Answers to six questions about your project
• A resubmission statement if we declined a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant application you submitted previously
• A detailed Plan A budget (Best-case scenario)
• A detailed Plan B budget (Worst-case scenario)
• A bibliography relevant to your proposed project.

The application also asks you to list the permits and permissions required for the proposed project, with the estimated dates by which you expect to secure them. However, please do not submit these documents with your application. If your application is successful, we will request copies of all relevant materials when we notify you of your award.

Applications must be in English. Applicants must submit all forms and other required materials online. If you don’t have adequate internet access to use our system, please contact us at least 1 week before the deadline and we’ll help arrange an alternative method. The online portal opens for applications 2 months before the application deadline.

Before submitting your application, please refer to the U.S. tax information on our website . Non-U.S. applicants should read the information on visa requirements for non-U.S. citizens present or coming to the U.S. as part of their project.

The Foundation requires successful applicants to comply with all U.S. laws. These include but are not limited to regulations governed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers U.S. government sanctions programs and regulations relating to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List). Please see the OFAC Guidelines page on our website and consult the U.S. Department of the Treasury for more information.

In compliance with OFAC regulations, the Foundation requires special documentation for projects located in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Crimea (including Sevastopol), the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic regions of Ukraine, and Russia. The Foundation does not require this documentation at the application stage, but we must receive it before we can release funds.

Please do not send any other materials beyond what the application requests. Do not send transcripts, letters of reference, manuscripts, publications, photographs, or recordings. We will not use this material in the review process, and we cannot return it to you.

External Funding for Ph.D. Students

External fellowships and grants are awarded by an organization or agency outside of Georgetown University. If you are looking for information about scholarships and fellowships offered by Georgetown University, please visit Merit-Based Financial Aid .

When to Apply

Many external fellowship competitions have deadlines six to twelve months before funds are awarded, so plan ahead and be proactive! Students should have a good grasp on their funding needs for the different stages of doctoral study, particularly as pertains to research or fieldwork support and writing grants. If you are an applicant to Georgetown University, please review our advice to applicants searching for external funding . 

Sample Humanities or Social Sciences Timeline

Sample Sciences Timeline

Featured Funding Opportunities

Most external fellowships are open to graduate students at universities nationwide, but some funding organizations restrict eligibility to specific partner universities. Georgetown University is a participating institution for the following funding opportunities for doctoral students.

Finding External Funding Opportunities

There is not one master database of all available external fellowships, so students should explore many avenues when searching for funding. Students should review the links below and also consult with faculty and classmates for advice about awards specific to their field of study. Each fellowship will have its own eligibility requirements and selection criteria, so students are encouraged to review the resources below to identify possible options to discuss before scheduling an appointment with the Office of Graduate Fellowships & Awards.

Fellowship Advising

The Office of Graduate Fellowships & Awards is available to support current Georgetown University graduate students on the Main and Medical campuses. The Office is able to work with graduate students enrolled at the Law Center or School of Continuing Studies for select funding opportunities . Unfortunately, assistance is not available to individuals currently applying to Georgetown graduate programs.

We are also available to provide individual feedback on essay or proposal drafts for external fellowships.  Before submitting a draft, students should have it reviewed by their advisor or another faculty member.

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NSF 101: Graduate and postdoctoral researcher funding opportunities

The U.S. National Science Foundation supports research opportunities and provides stipends for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and scholars.

There are multiple ways to find these programs, including the funding search on NSF’s website and the NSF Education & Training Application , which is growing its list of opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

To help begin your search, opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are listed below. The principal investigator, or PI (a researcher who oversees a project), is often listed on these grants, along with their graduate students or postdoctoral researchers.

Graduate Student 

While funding for graduate students is often included in a PI’s research proposal, the following opportunities are also available for early career researchers. 

• Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards/Grants (DDRI/DDRIG) These programs help fund doctoral research in a variety of fields to help provide for items not already available at the academic institution. The funding provided cannot be used for items such as, but not limited to, tuition, stipends, textbooks or journals. The monetary amount listed in each DDRI/ DDRIG section does not include indirect cost associated with the project. The doctoral student should be listed as a co-PI on the grants with their advisor listed as the primary PI.

Archaeology Program- DDRIG : This program supports doctoral laboratory and field research on archaeologically relevant topics, with the goal of increasing anthropologically focused understanding of the past. Awards provide funding up to $25,000 per awardee.  

Arctic Science Section DDRIG : The Arctic Sciences Section offers opportunities for DDRI proposals in the following programs: Arctic Social Sciences supports research in any field of social science. Arctic System Science supports projects that address the relationships among physical, chemical, biological, geological, ecological, social, cultural and/or economic processes to advance our understanding of the Arctic system. Arctic Observing Network supports projects focused on scientific and community-based- observations; development of in situ or remote sensors and automated systems; design and optimization of coordinated and scalable observation networks; and management of Arctic Observation Network data, data accessibility and data discovery. Awards provide funding up to $40,000 for a maximum of 3 years. 

Biological Anthropology Program- DDRIG : This program supports research on human and non-human primate adaptation, variation and evolution. Awards provide funding up to $25,000 for up to two years.  

Cultural Anthropology Program- DDRIG : This program supports research that is focused on cultural anthropology research, including topics such as: Sociocultural drivers of anthropogenic processes (i.e., deforestation, urbanization); resilience and robustness of sociocultural systems; scientific principles underlying altruism, conflict, cooperation, and variations in culture and behaviors; economy, culture migration and globalization; kinship and family norms. Awards provide funding for up to $25,000 for up to two years.  

Decision, Risk and Management Science DDRIG : This program supports research on decision, risk and management sciences. This includes research in the areas of judgement and decision making; decision analysis and decision aids, risk analysis; perception and communication; societal and public-policy decision making; and management science and organizational design. Awards are for a maximum of 12 months. 

Economics DDRIG :This program provides funding for research focused on improving the understanding of the U.S. and global economy from macroscale to microscale, including all field of economics such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics, economic theory, behavioral economics and empirical economics.  

Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program- DDRI : This program supports basic scientific research about the nature, causes and/or consequences of the spatial distribution of human activity and/or environmental processes across a range of scales. The program welcomes proposals for empirically grounded, theoretically engaged, and methodologically sophisticated, generalizable research in all sub-fields of geographical and spatial sciences. Awards may not exceed $20,000 in direct costs. 

Linguistics Program- DDRI : This program supports research on human language, including syntax, linguistic semantics and pragmatics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology of individual languages or in general. Awards provide up to $12,000 for a maximum of two years. 

Dynamic Language Infrastructure- DDRI : This program supports research on building dynamic language infrastructure, which includes describing languages; digitizing and preserving languages; and developing standards and databases for analyzing languages. Provides funding up to $15,000 for up to two years. 

Graduate Research Fellowship Program This fellowship supports full-time master's or doctoral students earning their degree in a research-based program focused on STEM or STEM education. Students are the primary submitter for the fellowship. Fellows will be awarded a $37,000 stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance for three years of the five-year fellowship. For tips on applying, see our previous NSF 101 article on the fellowship program . 

Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Opportunity   This supplemental funding opportunity is for graduate students funded by active NSF grants. PIs may submit for up to an additional six months of funding to allow students to participate in research internship activities and training opportunities in non-academic settings, such as the following: for-profit industry research; start-up businesses; government agencies and national laboratories; museums, science centers, and other informal learning settings; policy think tanks; and non-profit institutions. Students must have completed at least one academic year of their program. This funding request may not exceed $55,000 per student for each six-month period. A student may only receive this opportunity twice. In addition to the general INTERN opportunity, there are two topic-specific INTERN opportunities: 

Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students in Geothermal Energy Supplemental Funding Opportunity : This opportunity is provided by NSF in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It maintains the same funding levels and requirements as the general INTERN program; however, funding may only be used for gaining knowledge, skills, training and experience in geothermal energy and technology.  

• Research Internships for Graduate Students at Air Force Research Laboratory Supplemental Funding Opportunity : This funding opportunity is for students supported on an active NSF grant to intern at a Air Force Research Laboratory facility. AFRL has several potential technology directorates available for students at locations across the U.S.: Aerospace Systems (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio), Information (Rome, New York), Materials and Manufacturing (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio), Directed Energy (Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico), Munitions (Eglin Air Force Base, Florida), Sensors (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio), Space Vehicles (Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico), 711th Human Performance Wing Training (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio). 

Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship This summer internship is for doctoral students in mathematical sciences through a partnership between NSF and Oak Ridge Institute for Science and E ducation. It provides students who are interested in academic and non-academic careers with the opportunity to learn how advanced mathematics and statistical techniques can be applied to real-world problems. Participants in the internship will receive a stipend of $1,200 per week during the 10-week internship. In addition, there is travel reimbursement for up to $2,000 for those who live more than 50 miles away from their hosting site. 

NSF Research Traineeship Program Graduate students can apply for this traineeship through their institutions, if available. These topics can range across the scientific spectrum. Current projects can be found by state . 

Research Experiences for Graduate Students Supplemental Funding These awards provide additional funding for graduate students with mentors who have an active NSF grant. Currently funding is available through the following programs:  

Cultural Anthropology provides up to $6,000 per student for research activities. 

Human Environment and Geographical Sciences at Minority Serving Institutions and Community Colleges provides up to $7,000 per student for research activities. 

Postdoctoral Scholars 

Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship This fellowship supports research investigating a field within astronomy or astrophysics for up to three years. The stipend is $75,000, with a fellowship allowance (i.e., expenses for conducting and publishing research, fringe benefits) of $35,000. 

Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship This fellowship supports postdoctoral fellows in atmospheric or geospace sciences. Atmospheric science includes topics such as atmospheric chemistry; climate and large-scale dynamics; paleoclimate climate; and physical and dynamic meteorology. Geospace science focuses on aeronomy, magnetospheric physics and solar terrestrial research. This fellowship provides up to 24 months of support. The stipend is $70,000 per year, with a fellowship allowance of $30,000.  

Earth Science Postdoctoral Fellowship This program supports the study of structure, composition and evolution, the life it supports and the processes that govern the formation and behavior of Earth’s materials. Researchers are supported for up to two years at the institution of their choice, including institutions abroad. The stipend is $65,000 per year, with a fellowship allowance of $25,000 per year.  

Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral Research Fellowships

This program supports postdoctoral fellows performing impactful research while broadening the participation of members of groups that are historically excluded and currently underrepresented in mathematical and physical sciences. This fellowship can last between one and three years. The stipend is up to $70,000 per year, with a fellowship allowance of $30,000 per year. 

Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships This fellowship has two options:  

• The Research Fellowship provides full-time support for any 18 months within a three-year academic period.  
• The Research Instructorship provides a combination of full-time and half-time support over a period of three academic years, which allows the fellow to gain teaching experience. Both options receive up to $190,000 over the fellowship period. The full-time stipend is $5,833 per month and the part-time stipend is $2,917 per month. In addition, the fellow will receive $50,000 in two lump sums ($30,000 in the first year and $20,000 in the second year) for fellowship expenses.  

Ocean Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships This fellowship supports research in topic areas such as: biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, physical oceanography, marine geology and geophysics, ocean science and technology. This two-year fellowship with a stipend of $67,800 for the first year and $70,000 for the second year, with a fellowship allowance of $15,000 per year.  

Office of Polar Programs Postdoctoral Research Fellowships This fellowship supports postdoctoral research in any field of Arctic or Antarctic science. This two-years fellowship, with a stipend of $67,800 for the first year and $70,000 for the second year, with fellowship expenses of $15,000 per year.  

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology The Directorate of Biology offers a fellowship for postdoctoral researchers in one of three areas: 

• Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. This area requires a research and training plan that is within the scope of the Directorate for Biology and that enhances diversity within the field.  
• Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interaction between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. This area aims to understand higher-order structures and functions of biological systems. Research should use a combination of computational, observational, experimental or conceptual approaches. 
• Plant Genome Postdoctoral Research Fellowships. This area has a broad scope and supports postdoctoral training and research at the frontier of plant biology and of broad societal impact. Highly competitive proposals will describe interdisciplinary training and research on a genome wide scale. The fellowships are for 36 months and have a stipend of $60,000 per year, with a research and training allowance of $20,000 per year. 

SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowships This fellowship supports postdoctoral research in the social, behavioral and economic sciences and/or activities that broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in these fields. Funding is up to two years and has two tracks available:  

• Fundamental Research in the SBE Sciences. This track supports research focused on human behavior, interaction, social and economic systems. 
• Broadening Participation in SBE Sciences. This track aims to increase the diversity of post-doctoral researchers in the social, behavioral and economic sciences. In addition to the research proposal, these applications should also answer the question: “How will this fellowship help broaden or inform efforts to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in the United States?” The stipend for this program is $65,000 per year (paid in quarterly installments) and the research and training allowance is $15,000 per year. 

SBIR Innovative Postdoctoral Entrepreneurial Research Fellowship This fellowship supports postdoctoral researchers at start-up companies through the Small Business Innovation Research program. By recruiting, training, mentoring, matching and funding these early-career scientists, this fellowship addresses the need of doctoral-level expertise at small, high-tech businesses. The base stipend is $78,000 per year with optional individual health and life insurance, relocation assistance (company dependent), professional conference travel allowance, and professional development funds.  

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Individual Postdoctoral Research Fellowship This fellowship is for postdoctoral researchers to enhance their research knowledge, skills, and practices of STEM education research. If the fellowship is granted, the fellow is expected to remain affiliated with the host organization and PI sponsoring them. The fellowship can last up to two years with an annual stipend of $70,000, with fellowship expenses of $15,000.  

Multilevel 

CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service This program is for students earning their associates, bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree in cybersecurity. A stipulation of the program is that the recipients must work after graduation in a cybersecurity mission of the federal, state, local or tribal government for an equal amount of time as the scholarship's duration. It will provide full tuition and fees plus a stipend of $27,000 per academic year for undergraduates and a stipend of $37,000 per academic year for graduate students, in addition to a professional allowance of $6,000 for all levels. 

NSF-NIST Interaction in Basic and Applied Scientific Research This supplemental funding request is for NSF-supported researchers to collaborate with researchers at a National Institute of Standards and Technology facility. It can be used for travel expenses and per diem associated with on-site work at NIST. It is available for NSF-supported PIs, co-PIs, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and other personnel associated with the research. PIs should contact their NSF program director for their award before applying. 

This extensive list shows the ways in which NSF helps train the next generation of STEM researchers. If you are interested in learning more about any of these programs, reach out to contacts listed on the award webpages.  

If you are interested in awards for high school students, undergraduates and post-baccalaureate scholars, check out our previous NSF101 for more information! 

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As a graduate student, you may need to complete a thesis or dissertation as part of your program's graduation requirements. While theses are common among master’s students and dissertations among doctoral students, this may not apply universally across all programs. We encourage you to reach out to your program adviser to determine the specific requirements for your culminating project.

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The Office of Theses and Dissertations is the unit of the Graduate School responsible for certifying that theses and dissertations have been prepared in accordance with formatting requirements established by the Graduate School, the University Libraries, and the graduate faculty of Penn State. We are here to help you navigate the review and approval process to ensure you are able to graduate on time.

The Thesis and Dissertation Handbook explains Penn State formatting requirements for all master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. It covers the submission process and approval deadlines, the responsibilities of each student, and provides page examples. We highly recommend all students doing theses or dissertations to carefully review the handbook.

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Find required thesis and dissertation submissions dates for all Penn State graduate students.

Download a template to make sure your thesis or dissertation meets required formatting requirements for all Penn State theses and dissertations.

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PhD Students in the Natural Sciences, Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Medical Sciences

Phd students in the humanities and social sciences programs of the faculty of arts and sciences, phd students in humanities and social sciences programs offered in partnership with other harvard schools, acceptance of financial support.

The Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS) offers incoming PhD students full financial support—including tuition, health insurance fees, and basic living expenses—for a minimum of five years (typically the first four years of study and the completion year). This funding package includes a combination of tuition grants, stipends, traineeships, teaching fellowships, research assistantships, and other academic appointments.

Each student is provided a Notice of Financial Support at the time of admission and is assigned a financial aid officer who administers this funding and is available to assist with financial concerns. Each spring, continuing students supported by Harvard Griffin GSAS-administered funding sources are required to activate their funding for the upcoming academic year using the Student Aid Portal, an online financial aid management system.

A typical funding package* includes:

• grants toward tuition and the Harvard University Student Health Program  paid in full for years G1 through G4 and the dissertation completion year
• a combination of stipend, teaching fellowships, and/or research assistantships during years G1 through G4
• summer research support from Harvard Griffin GSAS or faculty grants following the first four academic years.
• subsidy payments to defray dental insurance and transportation costs.

*In some programs, the timing and structure of living expense support may vary from this pattern.

The initial Notice of Financial Support assumes continuous enrollment as a full-time resident student; students not enrolled are not eligible for Harvard Griffin GSAS financial aid programs. Students may find that their actual enrollment patterns necessitate adjustments to the timing of their funding. Students wishing to defer Harvard Griffin GSAS-administered funding indicate this in the Student Aid Portal during the annual financial aid acceptance process. The options for deferring financial support vary by type of aid; please refer to the applicable sections of the financial aid policy web pages for details. Students who are considering deferring financial support are strongly encouraged to contact their financial aid officer to review how such actions may impact their funding in future years.

While funding packages vary by program, PhD students in the sciences typically receive full funding until they complete their programs of study. Contact your department administrator or financial aid officer for details.

See more detailed information about funding for students in humanities and social sciences programs of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Humanities and Social Sciences Programs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

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• Middle Eastern Studies
• Social Policy

A number of humanities and social sciences PhD programs are offered in partnership with Harvard's professional schools. While funding packages vary by program, PhD students in these interfaculty programs generally receive at least four years of financial support for tuition, health fees, and living expenses; most programs provide dissertation completion fellowships as well. For more information, refer to your Notice of Financial Support or contact your financial aid officer .

Interfaculty Programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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Each student is provided a Notice of Financial Support at the time of admission and is assigned a financial aid officer who administers this funding and is available to assist with financial concerns. Students are required to formally accept their financial aid offers and acknowledge their understanding of financial aid policies. Students should also consult their academic programs to determine whether program-specific conditions apply.

Each spring, continuing students supported by Harvard Griffin GSAS-administered funding sources are required to activate their funding for the upcoming academic year using the Student Aid Portal, an online financial aid management system. Continued eligibility for financial aid is contingent upon an annual report by the faculty that the student is making  satisfactory progress toward the degree.

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CODESRIA support to Doctoral Students (College of Senior Academic Mentors)

Since 1988, CODESRIA has supported postgraduate students registered at African universities, through the Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing . Over time, this programme has been modified to accept only doctoral students with the overall objective of responding to the emerging challenge of doctoral supervision in the social sciences and humanities in African universities. This led to the establishment of a College of Senior Academic Mentors to support doctoral students registered at African universities in 2016.

The College is made up of senior diaspora academics (mentors) in the social sciences and humanities, who volunteer their time to be paired with doctoral students at African universities who are undertaking research in the same area as them. This pairing is for the purposes of mentoring and advising the students throughout their doctoral cycle.

The mentors read and comment on the students’ proposal and thesis chapters and assist them with relevant reading materials. They also link the students to other means of support within their own network for the purposes of workshop and conference participation and co-publication. The mentors provide the students with critical methodological and epistemological guidance that they require for their doctoral studies and contribute to timely completion of the students’ doctoral programme.

Call for applications: 2023 call for proposals

CODESRIA Support to Doctoral Schools

In 2017, CODESRIA launched a new intervention targeting Doctoral Schools and the rebuilding of scholarly infrastructures and academic communities in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). This intervention aims to achieve improved research capacity, collaboration and networking in HSS within African universities.

Under this intervention, the Council intends to strengthen the capacity of universities to fulfil their research mission, in addition to that of teaching; help young researchers to become better equipped at addressing the epistemological and methodological issues related to their research; and enhance their capacity to critically interrogate the theoretical, conceptual and methodological developments in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The overall objective is to restore and/or enhance the seminar culture within HSS schools and centres and doctoral schools in African universities, while encouraging the use of multi and interdisciplinary approaches. The support includes the following engagements :

• Scientific seminars that expose younger academics and PhD students to the relevant literature, current debates, and theoretical approaches in relation to a given topics.
• Methodology institutes.
• Scientific writing and publishing workshops.

To benefit from this support and promote knowledge sharing within the continent, one of the requirements is the involvement of academics from another African university or the diaspora into the pedagogic supervision of convenings. The outcome envisaged is a strong African research community in the Humanities and Social Sciences that can position itself in international research networks. Another contribution is to reinforce the institutional capacity of HSS centers by providing them with opportunities to improve their overall ability to manage research.

Over the last 5 years, 28 schools have been selected for support under this grant. These include institutions in francophone and anglophone countries. From their feedback, receiving the grant improved their capacity to train doctoral candidates and contributed to strengthening their institutions.

CODESRIA Advanced Humanities Fellowships

This Fellowship aims at supporting senior academics who are working in the humanities to produce work that helps map out new terrains in the study of the humanities in Africa.

This could focus on issues of theory, concept or methodology, or propose new ways of broadening the scope of the humanities in the continent beyond the traditional academic disciplines, to encompass emerging areas like digital or public humanities. More importantly, the programme is happy to show how the traditional humanities disciplines could accommodate or be accommodated by the emerging areas of study.

The Council awarded the first batch of grants under the 2020/2021 Advanced Humanities Fellowship to five fellows:

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="funding for phd thesis writing"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Required sections, guidelines, and suggestions.

Beyond those noted on the Formatting Requirements page , the Graduate School has no additional formatting requirements. The following suggestions are based on best practices and historic requirements for dissertations and theses but are not requirements for submission of the thesis or dissertation. The Graduate School recommends that each dissertation or thesis conform to the standards of leading academic journals in your field.

For both master’s and doctoral students, the same basic rules apply; however, differences exist in some limited areas, particularly in producing the abstract and filing the dissertation or thesis.

• Information in this guide that pertains specifically to doctoral candidates and dissertations is clearly marked with the term “ dissertation ” or “ doctoral candidates .”
• Information pertaining specifically to master’s candidates and theses is clearly marked with the term “ thesis ” or “ master’s candidates .”
• All other information pertains to both.

Examples of formatting suggestions for both the dissertation and thesis are available as downloadable templates .

Required? Yes.

Suggested numbering: Page included in overall document, but number not typed on page.

The following format for your title page is suggested, but not required.

• The title should be written using all capital letters, centered within the left and right margins, and spaced about 1.5 inches from the top of the page. (For an example, please see the template .)
• Carefully select words for the title of the dissertation or thesis to represent the subject content as accurately as possible. Words in the title are important access points to researchers who may use keyword searches to identify works in various subject areas.
• Use word substitutes for formulas, symbols, superscripts, Greek letters, etc.
• Below the title, at the vertical and horizontal center of the margins, place the following five lines (all centered):

Line 1: A Dissertation [or Thesis]

Line 2: Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

Line 3: of Cornell University

Line 4: in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Line 5: Doctor of Philosophy [or other appropriate degree]

• Center the following three lines within the margins:

Line 2: Primary or Preferred Name [as registered with the University Registrar’s Office and displayed in Student Center]

Line 3: month and year of degree conferral [May, August, December; no comma between month and year]

Copyright Page

Suggested numbering: Page included in overall document, but number not typed on page

The following format for your copyright page is suggested, but not required.

• A notice of copyright should appear as the sole item on the page centered vertically and horizontally within the margins: © 20__ [Primary or Preferred Name [as registered with the University Registrar’s Office]. Please note that there is not usually a page heading on the copyright page.
• The copyright symbol is a lowercase “c,” which must be circled. (On Macs, the symbol is typed by pressing the “option” and “g” keys simultaneously. If the font does not have the © symbol, type the “c” and circle it by hand. On PCs, in the insert menu, choose “symbol,” and select the © symbol.)
• The date, which follows the copyright symbol, is the year of conferral of your degree.
• Your name follows the date.

Required?  Yes.

Suggested numbering: Page(s) not counted, not numbered

Abstract formats for the doctoral dissertation and master’s thesis differ greatly. The Graduate School recommends that you conform to the standards of leading academic journals in your field.

Doctoral candidates:

• TITLE OF DISSERTATION
• Student’s Primary or Preferred Name, Ph.D. [as registered with the University Registrar’s Office]
• Cornell University 20__ [year of conferral]
• Following the heading lines, begin the text of the abstract on the same page.
• The abstract states the problem, describes the methods and procedures used, and gives the main results or conclusions of the research.
• The abstract usually does not exceed 350 words in length (about one-and-one-half correctly spaced pages—but not more than two pages).

Master’s candidate:

• In a thesis, the page heading is simply the word “ABSTRACT” in all capital letters and centered within the margins at the top of the page. (The thesis abstract does not display the thesis title, author’s name, degree, university, or date of degree conferral.)
• The abstract should state the problem, describe the methods and procedures used, and give the main results or conclusions.
• The abstract usually does not exceed 600 words in length, which is approximately two-and-one-half to three pages of correctly spaced typing.
• In M.F.A. theses, an abstract is not required.

Biographical Sketch

Suggested numbering: iii (may be more than one page)

• Type number(s) on page(s).

The following content and format are suggested:

• The biographical sketch is written in third-person voice and contains your educational background. Sometimes additional biographical facts are included.
• As a page heading, use “BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH” in all capital letters, centered on the page.
• Number this page as iii.

Required? Optional.

Suggested numbering: iv (may be more than one page)

The dedication page is not required and can contain whatever text that you would like to include. Text on this page does not need to be in English.

Acknowledgements

Suggested numbering: v (may be more than one page)

The following content and format are suggested, not required.

• The acknowledgements may be written in first-person voice. If your research has been funded by outside grants, you should check with the principal investigator of the grant regarding proper acknowledgement of the funding source. Most outside funding sources require some statement of acknowledgement of the support; some also require a disclaimer from responsibility for the results.
• As a page heading, use “ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

Table of Contents

Suggested numbering: vi (may be more than one page)

The following are suggestions.

• As a page heading, use “TABLE OF CONTENTS” in all capital letters and centered on the page.
• List the sections/chapters of the body of the dissertation or thesis. Also, list preliminary sections starting with the biographical sketch. (Title page, copyright page, and abstract are not listed.)
• For theses and dissertations, the conventional format for page numbers is in a column to the right of each section/chapter title. The first page of each chapter/section is stated with a single number. Table of contents usually do not include a range of page numbers, such as 7-22.
• The table of contents is often single-spaced.

Two-Volume Theses or Dissertations

If the dissertation or thesis consists of two volumes, it is recommended, but not required, that you list “Volume II” as a section in the table of contents.

List of Figures, Illustrations, and Tables

Suggested numbering: vii (may be more than one page)

• If included, type number(s) on page(s).

As described in the formatting requirements above, figures and tables should be consecutively numbered. The Graduate School recommends that you conform to the styles set by the leading academic journals in your field. The items below are formatting suggestions based on best practices or historic precedents.

Table of contents format:

• As a page heading, use “LIST OF FIGURES,” “LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,” or “LIST OF TABLES” in all capital letters, centered on the page.
• There should be separate pages for “LIST OF FIGURES,” “LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,” or “LIST OF TABLES” even if there is only one example of each.
• The list should contain enough of the titles or descriptions so readers can locate items using the list. (It may not be necessary to include entire figure/illustration/table captions.)
• The list should contain the page number on which each figure, illustration, or table is found, as in a table of contents.
• The list of figures/illustrations/tables may be single-spaced.

Page format:

• Figures/illustrations/tables should be placed as close as possible to their first mention in the text. They may be placed on a page with no text above or below, or placed directly into the text. If a figure/illustration/table is placed directly into the text, text may appear above or below the figure/illustration/table; no text may wrap around the figure/illustration/table.
• If a figure/illustration/table appears on a page without other text, it should be centered vertically within the page margins. Figures/illustrations/tables should not be placed at the end of the chapter or at the end of the dissertation or thesis.
• Figure/illustration/table numbering should be either continuous throughout the dissertation or thesis, or by chapter (e.g. 1.1, 1.2; 2.1, 2.2, etc.). The word “Figure,” “Illustration,” or “Table” must be spelled out (not abbreviated), and the first letter must be capitalized.
• A caption for a figure/illustration should be placed at the bottom of the figure/illustration. However, a caption for a table must be placed above the table.
• If the figure/illustration/table, not including the caption, takes up the entire page, the figure/illustration/table caption should be placed alone on the preceding page and centered vertically and horizontally within the margins. (When the caption is on a separate page, the List of Figures or List of Illustrations or List of Tables can list the page number containing the caption.)
• If the figure/illustration/table, not including the caption, takes up more than two pages, it should be preceded by a page consisting of the caption only. The first page of the figure/illustration/table must include the figure/illustration/table (no caption), and the second and subsequent pages must also include, at the top of the figure/illustration/table, words that indicate its continuance—for example, “Figure 5 (Continued)”—and on these pages the caption is omitted.
• If figures/illustrations/tables are too large, they may be reduced slightly so as to render a satisfactory product or they must either be split into several pages or be redone. If a figure/illustration/table is reduced, all lettering must be clear, readable, and large enough to be legible. All lettering, including subscripts, must still be readable when reduced 25% beyond the final version. All page margin requirements must be maintained. Page numbers and headings must not be reduced.
• While there are no specific rules for the typographic format of figure/illustration/table captions, a consistent format should be used throughout the dissertation or thesis.
• The caption of a figure/illustration/table should be single-spaced, but then captions for all figures/illustrations/tables must be single-spaced.
• Horizontal figures/illustrations/tables should be positioned correctly—i.e., the top of the figure/illustration/table will be at the left margin of the vertical page of the dissertation or thesis (remember: pages are bound on the left margin). Figure/illustration/table headings/captions are placed with the same orientation as the figure/illustration/table when they are on the same page as the figure/illustration/table. When they are on a separate page, headings and captions are always placed in vertical orientation, regardless of the orientation of the figure/illustration/table. Page numbers are always placed as if the figure/illustration/table was vertical on the page.

Photographs should be treated as illustrations. To be considered archival, photographs must be black-and-white. (If actual color photographs are necessary, they should be accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the same subject.) Color photos obtained digitally do not need to be accompanied by a black-and-white photograph. Make a high-resolution digital version of each photograph and insert it into your electronic document, following the guideline suggestions for positioning and margins.

Optional Elements

List of abbreviations.

As a page heading, use “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

List of Symbols

As a page heading, use “LIST OF SYMBOLS” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

Suggested numbering: xi (may be more than one page)

As a page heading, use “PREFACE” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

Body of the Dissertation or Thesis: Text

Suggested numbering: Begin page number at 1

• Text (required)
• Appendix/Appendices (optional)
• Bibliography, References, or Works Cited (required)

Please note that smaller font size may be appropriate for footnotes or other material outside of the main text. The following suggestions are based on best practice or historic precedent, but are not required.

• Chapter headings may be included that conform to the standard of your academic field.
• Textual notes that provide supplementary information, opinions, explanations, or suggestions that are not part of the text must appear at the bottom of the page as footnotes. Lengthy footnotes may be continued on the next page. Placement of footnotes at the bottom of the page ensures they will appear as close as possible to the referenced passage.

Appendix (or Appendices)

An appendix (-ces) is not required for your thesis or dissertation. If you choose to include one, the following suggestions are based on best practice or historic precedent.

• As a page heading, use “APPENDIX” in all capital letters, centered on the page.
• Place in an appendix any material that is peripheral, but relevant, to the main text of the dissertation or thesis. Examples could include survey instruments, additional data, computer printouts, details of a procedure or analysis, a relevant paper that you wrote, etc.
• The appendix may include text that does not meet the general font and spacing requirements of the other sections of the dissertation or thesis.

Bibliography (or References or Works Cited)

A bibliography, references, or works cited is required for your thesis or dissertation. Please conform to the standards of leading academic journals in your field.

• As a page heading, use “BIBLIOGRAPHY” (or “REFERENCES” or “WORKS CITED”) in all capital letters, centered on the page. The bibliography should always begin on a new page.
• Bibliographies may be single-spaced within each entry but should include 24 points of space between entries.

Suggested numbering: Continue page numbering from body

If you choose to include a glossary, best practices and historic precedent suggest using a page heading, use “GLOSSARY” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

Suggested numbering: Continue page numbering from glossary

If you choose to include one, best practices and historic precedent suggest using a page heading, use “INDEX” in all capital letters, centered on the page.

Font Samples

Sample macintosh fonts.

• Palatino 12
• Garamond 14
• New Century School Book
• Helvetica 12 or Helvetica 14
• Times New Roman 12
• Times 14 (Times 12 is not acceptable)
• Symbol 12 is acceptable for symbols

Sample TeX and LaTeX Fonts

• CMR 12 font
• Any font that meets the above specifications

Sample PC Fonts

• Helvetica 12

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Introductory Grants and Funding Workshops

Just beginning your search for external funding? Start with one of these two workshops, where we define different types of funding available, introduce search engines and other tools for finding funding, and explain the steps of the grant writing process. Note:  Finding Funding  includes discussions of key differences between grant writing and article writing, as well an introduction to the NSF GRFP fellowship program;  Spring 2021 Grant Introduction  focuses on the more general aspects of grant funding.

• Click here to download the recording  (requires Baylor ID and password)
• Click here to download the PowerPoint  (requires Baylor ID and password)
• C lick here to download the recording  (requires Baylor ID and password)
• Click here to download the PowerPoint  (requires Baylor ID and password)

Grant Writing Workshop

Found the perfect grant and want to ensure that your application is as competitive as possible? One of our most popular, this workshop tackles the nuts and bolts of crafting the types of research and personal statements that get funded. Learn how to identify the components of grant applications, emphasize your experience and potential, and avoid common pitfalls.

• Click here to download the recording  (requires Baylor ID and password)

STEM Funding Workshop

Are you a STEM student interested in finding funding opportunities for your research or dissertation? This workshop, tailored for STEM students, introduces Baylor's resources for grant searching in both private and government sectors. It also includes an introduction for the NSF GRFP. 

Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Workshop

Thinking about applying to the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)? If you are a STEM student who has not yet begun graduate school, are in the first two years of your program, or are returning to graduate school to finish a degree, this might be the program for you. The GRFP is a prestigious government award that includes three years of funding. In this workshop, we introduce the fellowship program, explain eligibility requirements, define the components of the application, and provide tips and resources for writing a competitive application.

Note: This is a recording of the Fall 2020 GRFP workshop. For the revised PowerPoint--updated for the current year--click  here .

• Click here to download the recording  (requires Baylor ID and password)    

Grant Search/Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship

Ready to broaden your search for external funding? Looking for funding for your final year of dissertation writing? In this two-part workshop, we begin by delving into the details of the funding databases Baylor have access to and how to use them. In the second half, we introduce the Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship program, which provides funding for the final year of dissertation writing for humanities students whose research involves religion, ethics, or morality. We explain eligibility requirements, define the components of the application, and provide tips and resources for writing a competitive application.

Note: Many of these workshops are offered regularly; not every version is recorded and uploaded here. However, if you need access to a specific version of a workshop PowerPoint, please visit our Box folder  here  (requires Baylor ID and password) or reach out to Kevin O'Donoghue ( [email protected] ).

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Ph.D. Student Affiliation and Backstop Funding Policy

To clarify The Graduate School (TGS) expectations regarding the financial obligation for Ph.D. student funding.

Full time Ph.D. students who are in good academic standing and are making adequate progress toward their degree are guaranteed financial support for their first five consecutive academic years beginning at the date of matriculation into the Graduate School. In order to make this guarantee, The Graduate School must have a Management Center backstop for each graduate student in order to protect each student from the potential loss of external funding during his or her projected years of study. Continued support is, as always, contingent on acceptable academic and research performance as determined in an ongoing manner by the student’s advisor, Director of Graduate Studies, and committee, where appropriate. The term “affiliate” is used in this document exclusively to mean the choice of a degree program open to Ph.D. students who have matriculated into an admitting program in which the student can complete the degree in any one of the programs or departments designated as affiliates of the admitting program.

• In the event that a student selects a thesis advisor from a department or program other than the admitting department or program, and therefore opts to affiliate with the advisor’s department or program to complete the Ph.D., the student should be funded in accordance with the compensation model of the department or program with which the student affiliates. Students must be advised by their admitting program Director of Graduate Studies that their stipend level will correspond to that practiced in the department or program of their chosen affiliation. Funding can be provided through any combination of departmental or competitive fellowship, teaching or research assistantship, or external support.  
• In the event that a Ph.D. student’s thesis advisor is the primary source of the student’s support and is unable to meet the five-year funding commitment, the student’s support (tuition remission, fees, and stipend) will be covered by the department or program that receives the indirect cost revenues (ICRs) generated by the thesis advisor’s grants until such a time as suitable rearrangements can be made for renewed support. In most cases, such “backstop” support will come from the department in which the thesis advisor holds his/her primary appointment. Backstop funding agreements are expected to occur for the first five consecutive years of study, which is the standard institutional funding commitment to Ph.D. students. In some schools or graduate programs, this commitment continues until the end of the Ph.D. student’s career.  
• When a graduate student’s thesis advisor has a primary, tenure track appointments in one unit but the ICR revenue from the advisor’s grants flows to another organizational unit within Duke, such as in the University Institutes and Centers (UICs) that are jointly funded by the Provost Area Management Center (PAMC) and the Medical Center Management Center (MCMC), the backstop agreement will be as follows:  
• 50 percent from the UIC budget
• 25 percent from Graduate School reserves, on behalf of the PAMC
• 25 percent from School of Medicine graduate student reserves, on behalf of the MCMC  
• Backstop funding should be provided when there are changes in faculty advisor, whether due to the advisor leaving the institution or other reasons causing interruptions or delays in mentor support. The funding can be provided through any combination of departmental or competitive fellowship, teaching or research assistantship, or external support.
• Faculty advisors will be expected to commit and attest to the financial obligations outlined herein by completing and signing the  Statement of Financial Support form (PDF) .
• The director of graduate studies assistant (DGSA) of the admitting department or program should complete the form, obtaining all required signatures.
• Electronic copies (PDF) of the completed forms should be uploaded into the student’s electronic record in Perceptive Content ( Instructions ).
• For admitting programs in the School of Medicine, an electronic copy should also be available to the Office of Biomedical Graduate Education (OBGE) upon request.

Issued Date

Last revised, last reviewed, related documents.

• form_statement_of_financial_support.pdf

Financial Support

Financial Support Policy

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Graduate College

Principles and practice of writing for graduate students, what is gc 512 heading link copy link.

• GC 512 provides students with the principles and practices to write according to the conventions of academic English and to communicate with specialist and nonspecialist audiences. The course was designed for doctoral students who have completed at least 32 credit hours in their PhD program.
• During the fall and spring semesters, we offer one section for STEM students and one section for students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the summer, we endeavor to offer one “mixed” section (STEM and non-STEM combined). While we occasionally experiment with a relaxation of the 32-credit-hour requirement, students who have completed all/most their coursework and who have a significant writing project underway benefit the most.
• Using “Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory” grading, this 3-credit-hour elective may or may not be used towards degree requirements. Consult your graduate program’s Director of Graduate Studies. The course may be repeated for credit, space permitting.

How do I register? Heading link Copy link

When does gc 512 meet heading link copy link.

Spring 2024 sections:

• CRN 40746: Wednesdays 3:00-5:50, Online Synchronous, STEM focused.
• CRN 39467: Thursdays 3:30-6:20, Online Synchronous, Humanities/Social Sciences focused.

Course learning outcomes Heading link Copy link

1. write according to the conventions of academic English

• at the sentence level: use various types of clauses, make appropriate verb choices, avoid needless complexity and jargon
• at the paragraph level: write clear topic sentences, employ smooth transitions within paragraphs, and create coherence across paragraphs

2. use a writing process prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, submitting to successfully complete academic writing assignments

3. identify strengths and weaknesses in a text

4. create effective posters and/or PowerPoint presentations

5. communicate effectively with specialist and nonspecialist audiences

Dr. Vincent Adiutori Heading link Copy link

Lecturer, gc 512.