ACLS Awards 15 Community College Faculty Research Fellowships
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the awardees of the ACLS Community College Faculty Research Fellowships, a one-year pilot program for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who teach at two-year degree-granting institutions. Fifteen community college scholars have been selected to pursue short term, flexible residencies at three partner research centers: the American Antiquarian Society, the Folger Institute at Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Newberry Library. This pilot program is made possible by the support of the Mellon Foundation.
“Supporting the research ambitions of community college faculty enriches humanistic fields in powerful ways,” said Nike Nivar Ortiz, ACLS Program Officer in US Programs. “Community college faculty serve more than 40% of undergraduates in the United States, bringing invaluable perspectives that shape the future of the academy. ACLS is proud to recognize the vital contributions of these teacher-scholars to research, student learning, local communities, and to the larger enterprise of the humanities as a public good.”
The 2025 ACLS Community College Faculty Research Fellows represent a wide range of institutions, including Bakersfield College, Elgin Community College, Gaston College, and Miami Dade College, and fields, such as English, history, and sociology. The awardees’ projects are grounded in the collections of their host research center and include research on oral histories in Latinx suburban communities of Chicago, politics in Medieval dream literature, the history of slave resistance in Trinidad, and a study of how nineteenth-century Irish immigrants used ballads to re-imagine their identities and experiences in the United States.
The ACLS Community College Faculty Research Fellowship Program was developed based on feedback from faculty in the sector and is designed to offer flexible support responsive to their distinct working conditions. The fellowships can be taken for a tenure of two to three months, and the work can be done in person, virtually, or as a hybrid. The awards carry a stipend of $3,500 per month, with an additional $1,500 for fellows undertaking any portion of their residency on-site.
The program will also convene focus groups which will bring the fellows and additional community college faculty and administrators together with funders, leadership of the research centers, scholarly associations, and other stakeholders to advise on the development of a more inclusive research infrastructure for scholars in teaching-intensive faculty roles.