Summer is a great time to start working on fellowship and award applications! The Fall fellowship season is busy, with most deadlines occurring between August and December. The Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards offers two Summer Workshop Series to support graduate students in their journey to search and apply for funding opportunities. Our Three-Day Finding Funding Workshop provides an in-depth look at the process of identifying and applying for external fellowships and awards, including guidance on using databases to search for funding and best tips for beginning an application. Our Four-Part Application Writing Workshop provides intensive application writing support for graduate students who have already identified an external fellowship they plan to apply for during the 2025-2026 academic year. We hope that many of you will join us this summer!
If you have won an external award for the 2024-2025 or 2025-2026 academic year, we want to celebrate you! Submit your award information here.
If you are interested in applying for fellowships and awards but don’t quite know where to begin, check out the Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards Let’s Meet webpage for more information on how to jumpstart your fellowships and awards journey.
Fellowship Pro-Tip: Finding Funding Opportunities
Many graduate student fellowships and grants have deadlines during the fall semester, which makes summer a great time to identify potential opportunities and plan your applications. In truth, though, searching for funding is something you should do year-round as a graduate student; approach seeking funding as a long-term campaign throughout your graduate career.
It can be overwhelming to jump into the process of searching for funding, but OGFA has resources to make it easier and to assist you in your search. First, we offer monthly meetings on “Funding Your Graduate Education,” which provide a broad overview of searching for and applying for external funding. Second, we have a series of Funding Booklets available on our website. These booklets are not exhaustive lists of fellowships or awards, but they are a great place to start your search. We have booklets arranged by disciplinary area (such as “Humanities” and “Education”), and we have others organized by award type (such as “Funding for International Students” and “Dissertation Fellowships”).
Our website also contains links to various Funding Databases, which you can use to do tailored funding searches based on your discipline, degree level, area of research, and other factors unique to you and your work. The University of Illinois’s Fellowship Finder is an open-access and easy-to-use database to start with. FSU also subscribes to the funding database Pivot, which is a powerful tool for finding funding. Pivot will allow you to setup and save a series of searches, and it will then send you notifications about new opportunities that fit with those saved searches. We highly recommend taking the time to learn how to use Pivot and to setup a series of searches. To make that process easier, we’ve recorded a Pivot Tutorial that you can access on YouTube.
The key to finding funding is to simply start looking. The process can be a bit tedious, but it’s not difficult, and it won’t take long for your search to yield results. So, make use of our resources, join us at one of our monthly meetings, and empower yourself to fund your graduate education. There’s something out there for everyone, you just have to look for it!
Graduate Students in the News
SGA Congress of Graduate Students gives voice to international students on FSU’s campus
The Congress of Graduate Students (COGS), which includes representatives from nine countries this year, serves as a crucial platform where international students can advocate for their needs, celebrate their heritage, and shape their academic journey. Currently, international students make up 16% of the graduate student body on FSU’s campus and 26% of COGS’ current representatives. Read more.
Doctoral student Vince Omni explores African-American history, joy, and resilience through award-winning narratives
Vince Omni came to FSU in August 2020 to pursue a doctorate through the Department of English, and he specializes in African-American literary and cultural studies. In his award-winning story, “The Diaspora Café,” published in the summer 2024 issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, Omni reflects on the importance of inclusive community spaces and addresses the impact of gentrification on communities of color. Read more.
Sharing Smiles: FSU Panama City nurse anesthesia students assist cleft lip and palate surgeries in Mexico
Two students in Florida State University Panama City’s Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Program (DNAP) used their clinical skills to make lasting impact on communities in need. Alonso Martin Arcadia-Reynoso and Daniel O’Malley flew to Mexico in February to volunteer with the AdventHealth Foundation’s “Sharing Smiles” program, a medical charity that provides free corrective surgeries for needy children in Latin America who were born with cleft lips or palates. Read more.
Reef resilience: FSU doctoral student selected for Guy Harvey Fellowship for coral reef research in the Florida Keys
Lillie Bradshaw, a doctoral student studying ecology and evolution in FSU’s Department of Biological Science, is among eight graduate students across Florida to earn the 2025 Guy Harvey Fellowship, presented jointly by the Guy Harvey Foundation and Florida Sea Grant program. The $5,000 award will support Bradshaw’s research in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Read more.
Summer 2025 Professional Development
Funding Your Graduate Education: Database Search
OGFA staff will facilitate small group meetings to assist graduate students with navigating award databases to identify fellowships and awards that are a good "fit" to support their graduate education.
- Wednesday, May 21, 10 AM | Register Here
- Tuesday, June 17, 2 PM | Register Here
- Thursday, July 31, 10 AM | Register Here
Three-Day Finding Funding Workshop Series
June 24, 25, and 26 | 10 AM - 12 PM | Register here
Don't know much about the process of finding and applying for external funding? This workshop series is for you!
- Day 1: Introduction to the process of finding good fit funding opportunities
- Day 2: Navigating funding databases and organizing a list of awards
- Day 3: Researching funding organizations and planning a funding campaign
Draft-Write-Repeat Writing Workshop Series
July 15, 17, 22, and 24 | 10 AM - 12:30 PM | Apply here
Are you planning to apply for a major competitive fellowship in the next six months? If so, this series is for you! Join the OGFA for this exciting four days of learning and refining effective writing and language strategies for fellowship and award application essays. Please note, this workshop is limited to 15 participants; selection is based on completed applications.
- Day 1: Plan. Research the funder and the award, review criteria, make checklist and set goals.
- Day 2: Draft. Getting started with communicating your research and your fit. Thinking holistically across an application.
- Day 3 & 4: Revise. Receive feedback (one on one consultations), edit, & edit more. Set up a plan to turn what you have into a complete application.
Leakey Foundation Research Grants
This grant program exclusively funds research related to human origins, including dissertation research and exploratory studies. The disciplines supported include archaeology, biological anthropology, paleoanthropology, primate behavioral ecology, genetics, geology, anatomy, morphology, paleobotany, and paleoclimatology. The Foundation prioritizes funding for the exploratory phases of promising new research projects and innovative, multidisciplinary approaches that expand the boundaries of our current understanding.
Deadline: July 15, 2025
URA Visiting Scholars Program (Fermilab)
The Universities Research Association’s Visiting Scholars Program (VSP) was established in 2007 to support faculty, postdocs and graduate students from URA institutions to work at Fermilab for up to one year. Visits can range from attendance at Fermilab conferences and summer schools to year-long stays at the Lab. Proposals may be submitted twice a year, in February and August. Support provided by the program may include the following: travel and local lodging expenses during a series of short visits OR salary support and round trip travel expenses for an extended visit.
Deadline: August 25, 2025
American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship
The AHA Predoctoral Fellowship is intended to enhance the integrated research and clinical training of promising students who are matriculated in pre-doctoral or clinical health professional degree training programs and who intend careers as scientists, physician-scientists or other clinician-scientists, or related careers aimed at improving global cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and brain health.
Deadline: September 3, 2025
PEO International Peace Scholarship
The P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship (IPS) Fund provides scholarships to international women pursuing graduate degrees in the U.S. to foster global peace through education. IPS recipients carry the spirit of P.E.O. back to their home countries where the degrees they have earned positively impact people’s lives around the globe. At time of application, students must have a full year of coursework remaining and be enrolled and in residence in the U.S. for the entire school year.
Deadline: Eligibility forms open on September 15, 2025
Celebrating Graduate Education
The work and research in action of graduate students at Florida State University broadly impacts the campus community and the world around us. OGFA initiated the Grad Impact: Digital Narratives Project to capture and amplify the lived graduate student experience at FSU. Check out some of our grad student highlights below.
If you are interested in sharing your experience and research, please submit your profile info here.
Jimmy Saint Jean
Law Enforcement Intelligence
"Advanced expertise, career advancement, and personal growth"
Gallage H D Nipun Ariyaratne
Biomedical Sciences
"To deepen knowledge, advance career, contribute"
View Profile
Susan Cox
Spanish
"Enhances knowledge, fuels passion, empowers future"
View Profile
Ria Skylar Brooks
Educational Psychology
"Knowledge, Advocate, Leadership, Development, Integrate, and Educate"
View Profile
Hayk Bejanyan
Public Administration
"Expanding knowledge and skills for impact"
View Profile
Click here to see more #Gradimpact student profiles.