The History of the ACA Faculty Fellowship Program
The Appalachian College Association's Faculty Fellowship Program is the longest running program of the ACA. The Fellowship Endowment is supported by foundations (notably the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the McCune Foundation and others), member schools, and individual contributions.
In 1990, presidents of ACP member colleges, organized the Appalachian College Association to ensure a stable administrative base for the continuation of faculty development opportunities and to encourage the exploration of other collaborative ventures. The ACA received its first major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1991 for continued support of the Faculty Fellowship Program. The ACA completed a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000 which further boosted the endowment for faculty fellowships and development.
Since 1993 when the transformation to an independent association was completed, the Appalachian College Association and the Faculty Fellowship Endowment have supported over 350 requests totaling over $6 million. ACA faculty have studied with leading experts at institutions in the United States (including the University of Virginia, Columbia, Duke, Yale, and Vanderbilt) and abroad, including universities located in England, Mexico, Germany, Ireland, China, New Zealand, India, and France.
The ACA appreciates the extremely high caliber of faculty on our member campuses and understand the difficulty that our member schools sometimes have in providing these faculty with funding for research. The ACA and the contributors to the ACA Faculty Fellowship Endowment are proud to assist our schools in providing professional development resources to their deserving faculty.
Faculty interested in applying for a fellowship must hold full-time faculty status at an ACA institution, have had their current teaching position for at least two years, must arrange leave time for the fellowship, and agree to return to their ACA institution to teach for at least twice the term of the fellowship (a minimum of one academic year).
Fellowship recipients are selected by the Fellowship Review Committee: graduate school deans (or designees) from the ACA's Affiliated Research Universities (University of Kentucky, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Virginia, West Virginia University, and Virginia Tech) and chief academic officers from ACA schools elected by the ACA Deans Council for rotating, three-year terms.
Fellowship funds are paid to the ACA institution, not to the fellowship recipient. For one-and two-semester fellowships, the funds help to cover the costs of adjunct faculty replacements and other expenses while the fellowship recipient is not teaching. The institution continues to pay the recipients salary. Funds for short-term fellowships are also sent to the school and are distributed with that institutions policies.
Please review the fellowship guidelines for eligibility.